The Legend of Zelda Fans Aren’t Happy About New Skyward Sword Amiibo

Nintendo announced earlier this week that it would be releasing a new Amiibo to tie in with the upcoming release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD. This is a pretty common thing that the Japanese video game publisher does when it releases any new first-party title. However, rather than simply being excited about the prospect of adding a new Amiibo to their ongoing collections, many fans were rather unhappy with this

The source of this discontent with the new Skyward Sword Amiibo stems from a few different things. For starters, the Amiibo itself–which features Zelda and a Loftwing creature from the game–is more expensive than normal. Typically, most Amiibo that Nintendo releases cost about $15.99. Instead, this latest version for Skyward Sword will retail for nearly $10 more and will set customers back $24.99. As for the reason why it is more expensive, Nintendo has seemed to justify the cost by noting that it contains two figures on a single base rather than one. While some Amiibo collectors are used to paying higher prices like this from time to time, there doesn’t seem to be a good purpose for raising the value in this instance.

The even bigger reason why The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword fans are unhappy comes with how the Amiibo itself can be used in-game. Essentially, Nintendo has added a new fast travel system in Skyward Sword HD that will allow players to get around the game’s world much easier thanks to said Amiibo. Rather than needing to find a statue within the world–which is what you had to do in the original Skyward Sword to travel about–using this Amiibo will allow you to immediately return to the sky, and vice versa. It’s a feature that many fans felt should have naturally been in the game. Instead, Nintendo is essentially locking its inclusion behind an artificial paywall.

Since first being revealed a few days ago, fans have slowly been voicing their displeasure about the decision on social media. While Nintendo has been known to do some troublesome things like this in the past, many fans have been more boisterous than normal about how this is simply a bad move. Although nothing is likely going to change with this situation, it does sound like Nintendo has generated some bad PR for itself with this practice.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD and its accompanying Amiibo are both slated to release later this summer on July 16. Keep reading on below if you would like to see how some fans have reacted to the situation.