NFC Nintendo figures

Late last week during their financial results briefings, Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata announced that the company will be releasing a line of near field communication figurines (like Skylanders and Disney Infinity) that will interact with games on the Wii U and 3DS towards the end of 2014. Apparently the figurines will be able to write game data "across many titles", so unlike Activision's Skylanders, Nintendo's figurines could potentially all have a tone of applications. 

I think this is a great idea for pushing Nintendo characters to a different audience that would otherwise not pay attention to their games, especially young children. Having these toys on store shelves will give Nintendo a greater presence to the general public and to parents who don't buy videos games for their kids. The Wii U is in an extremely bad position right now and if Nintendo doesn't give people a reason to buy one the company will soon be in a bad place. Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros (my most anticipated games this year) are coming soon, but if they can't give a significant push to Wii U sales not much will, unless the company experiments and comes up with something new. This is a good step towards that, but at the moment that is all we know until E3.

I hope this works out for Nintendo, like Disney they have a tone of franchises and characters that people have a strong connection with. Everyone knows who Super Mario is, he maybe even more recognisable than Mickey Mouse. Now that's saying something. 

The question I have with these figurines is what influence will they have within Nintendo's games? Will they add small features like being able to take a save file to a friends house, contain a download code for a game or add content only available via the figurines? As someone who isn't a kid, I really don't want buy toys to place around my room (even if they are cool Nintendo characters). If I'm forced to buy them to unlock content in Smash Bros I'll be pissed, as will be many other people. I just feel if Nintendo want us to care about these figurines they need to implement them in games we care about, and that worries me. Hopefully they'll come come up with a smart and fair way for them to enhance our gaming experience. Only a month to go until E3!

What do you think of Nintendo's NFC figurines?