What feels most offensive to me is that people’s previous digital purchases of classic games through Virtual Console are permanently stuck on their Wiis and 3DSes, and can’t be transferred to the Switch, which only supports emulating classic games through paid subscriptions.

Compare that to the PC market. I signed up for Steam in 2010 to buy Orange Box—Half‐Life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal—for $10, and for over a decade that entire game pack has remained downloadable and playable on every PC I’ve owned, including most recently the Steam Deck.

Yeah, amiibo content is definitely on the exploitative side. Most of the things you get with it in games like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild should have been available in the base game, and it irritates me that quality of life features in games like Super Mario Odyssey and Zelda Skyward Sword are locked away in the same way.

It's very much on disc DLC, except with a plastic figure associated with it.

I absolutely do not recommend you visit Etsy and absolutely would never suggest you search for NFC cards that emulate amiibos.

Hah way ahead of you there! Got some amiibo cards for Breath of the Wild about a year or two ago, and they've worked fantastically.