Mario Skylander?

With the Wii U being a flop, Nintendo has been in a bad financial situation. So, they have been doing everything they can to get their sales up. But this was unexpected, which I suppose should be expected if Sakurai had anything to do with. They debuted Skylanders-like figurines at their latest financial meeting. These figures don't work exactly the same way though. Unlike Skylanders and Disney Infinity, these figures don't have their own game. Instead they'll interact with lots of Nintendo games, while saving all of the data that they have collected to the figure.

One of the best parts of these figurines in my opinion is that they will work both on the Wii U and 3DS. Obviously these figures will use the built in RFID reader, but the 3DS doesn't have one, and Nintendo must be regretting that now. Instead they will have to include a new piece of hardware that you could wirelessly communicate with the 3DS that has a RFID reader, like the Portal of Power from Skylanders. 

But there are still many questions about this new hardware. Most notably would be how it will work in games. I think that they would at least have the following figures:

• Kirby
• Luigi 
• Mario (confirmed)
• Yoshi
• Donkey Kong

The reason I say these are because that they are the franchises biggest names and are all platformers that have similar characteristics. I think that these figures would only be able to used in their own games, but then could all come together in Super Smash Bros., since this includes all of those characters and the game will be coming out on both the 3DS and Wii U. Or, it could be a Mario only thing and have Luigi, Mario, Peach, Bowser, Koopa, DK, DK jr., Koopa, Waluigi, Wario, ect. and could all come together in Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. How ever this ends up being used, Mario will probably be used to communicate between New Super Mario Bros. 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii U, Super Mario 3D World, and Super Mario 3D Land. But that 's all just a guess. How exactly it will work no one really knows because that Nintendo has revealed very little and has only advertised Mario, although it is believed more may be revealed at E3 2014.

Thanks for reading, and as usual check back here for more info on these figurines! Until then you can check out the GameXplain discussion the new figures and Nintendo's financial state overall.

Information from: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/nintendo-nfc-figurines/