Gaming is huge money, that's impossible to deny. The industry today is worth more than movies and music combined. This is thanks to giant, worldwide phenomenons like Grand Theft Auto, yearly releases like Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed and as much as we may not like to put them in the same category, insanely popular mobile titles like Candy Crush Saga.
However video games aren't just big money makers because of the sales of physical and digital copies of the titles themselves, but their companion products and that's especially true for games that manage to utilise those products in the games themselves.
We are of course talking about games that grant extra levels, characters and content for players that also own the accompanying NFC enabled figures. We're talking about Skylanders, a series of games and figurines that has made Activision and various developrs more than $2 billion over the past half decade. We're talking about Disney Infinity, which has sold millions and millions of its own.
And of course we're talking Nintendo Amiibo, the millions of sales of which helped Nintendo reach its first quarterly profit in years.
Clearly digitally augmented figurines are huge business for many genres, but not many companies have taken advantage of it. The question is, should they?
One firm that may do, is Bandai Namco. It was recently learned that a patent filed in the EU for upcoming Pokemon themed beat'em up, Pokken Tournament, also had provisions for NFC enabled figurines. Considering this will be a game that will be released on the Wii U, it would make sense if any Pokken/Pokemon figures become part of the Amiibo family and even cross over into other titles like Smash Bros, but heading down the road of Pokemon figurines opens up all sorts of ideas.
The Pokemon franchise is one that's been ripe for this sort of treatment for years. The very idea of 'catching them all' could easily apply to figures as it could to the digital versions.
That said, tt would feel like a bit of a money grab from Nintendo and The Pokemon Company if they were to release figures for every single one and likely, that wouldn't be the most profitable venture as very few would end up buying more than a handful of the 700+ Pokemon currently available in-game. But a select few would be cool, or even some special new Pokemon that could only be caught with the purchase of their companion figure.
But why stop there? There are plenty of games that could easily be augmented with real-world figurines. How about a Dungeons and Dragons game, where the DM 'drops in' enemies via NFC figurines and the player characters enter the dungeon through tapping their favourite avatar on their Wii U or 3DS.
WWE wrestling games could work with something like this, especially since selling posable dolls is such a large part of its business anyway. Some sort of dock system might need to be considered if it moved away from the Wii U, but it's not like Skylanders and Infinity haven't paved the way for that sort of bespoke hardware anyway.
Games Workshop however could be the biggest franchise that could benefit from such a scheme. Although the long-time tabletop game maker has been loath to go full tilt with its digital games for fear that it would cannibalise its steadily dwindling physical figure sales, it wouldn't be difficult for it to release some highly-detailed plastic models with optional NFC chips in them.
Who here wouldn't like a Warhammer game where you build your army list by tapping digital orcs and goblins onto a dock of some kind? Who wouldn't like to see Space Marine chapters show up on the battlefield via drop pod every time you touched one of their stalwart figures to the base of your Wii U gamepad?
This is the right time for it too, since Games Workshop seems keen on bolstering its ever expanding line up of games right now, with many small and large titles in the works, covering everything from Battlefleet Gothic: Armada, to Total War: Warhammer.
But why stop there. Digitise any number of board and tabletop games and allow anyone that buys a boxed game to also play a digital version on their PC or console. There are endless games this could apply to and it would especially make people more interested in DLC, if every time they bought something there was a physical product attached.
By a big box expansion for your game and get access to the digital version of that content too.
The possibilities seem almost endless, if a little daunting at their potential for expense too. Still, let's imagine that none of us would become bankrupt and our houses filled with NFC figures if everyone did this, and take a swing at what other games might utilise these sorts of figures.
What ones can you think of?