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Nintendo Offers Character Figurines That Interact With Wii U, 3DS

posted on by Egan Loo
Collectible NFC figures similar to Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Pokémon Rumble

Nintendo announced during its latest financial results briefing on Wednesday that it will release character figurines that can interact wirelessly with its Wii U and 3DS game systems. The development codename for this initiative is NFP for "NFC Featured Platform" or “Nintendo Figurine Platform." NFC stands for near-field communication, the technology that enables the Wii U GamePad to communicate with nearby objects.

Players can buy figures of Nintendo's popular characters by end of this year, and those figures will work with multiple software titles. Since each figure stores a limited amount of data, a game can customize or level up a figure's character.

Since only the Wii U has a built-in NFC reader/writer, Nintendo will offer an wireless infrared reader/writer next year for the 43 million Nintendo 3DS systems already sold. Nintendo will announce the NFP game lineup and preview the figurines at next month's E3 conference in Los Angeles.

Activision also uses NFC figures for its hit multi-platform game franchise Skylanders, and Disney followed suit last year with Disney Infinity. Nintendo first outlined its NFC strategy in January. It already offers NFC figures for its Pokémon Rumble (Pokémon Scramble U) Wii U game, and The Pokémon Company filed to register trademarks for Pokken Fighters and Pokken Tournament on "video games [and] Near field communication (NFC) technology-enabled devices" in Europe.

[Via Gematsu]


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