Miyamoto talks about Pikmin 3, ''shifted'' for the better
GameSpot: With regards to Pikmin 3, what's one point of gameplay you can point to and say "that's only possible because of what the Wii U can do?"
Miyamoto: When I create a game, I don't necessarily always try to approach it from the idea of leveraging every feature or every ability of that new piece of hardware. In the case of Pikmin in particular, the approach that we took was really less of an approach of how can we [...] take advantage of what the Wii U is doing, per se, and instead how can we take what was that Pikmin experience and really make it a deeper experience for players.
So of course we're taking advantage of the graphics and improving the play control and whatnot and I guess if you were to look at it more broadly, you might not necessarily say that it would be impossible to do it on another system. But I guess speaking plainly, the idea is really that Wii U is the best system to be able to achieve all of the different things that we're trying to do with this new Pikmin game. One of the biggest features of Pikmin 3 is the fact that you have the map on the GamePad at all times and because Pikmin is a strategy game, it's the type of game that you might play the same levels over and over again. Having that map--and the fact that you have the three different leaders that you switch between to command your Pikmin--and having the touchscreen on the map will allow you to change perspective or jump to a specific leader and quickly give orders.It makes it much more efficient for you to achieve the goals that you have strategically within the game.
GameSpot: Pikmin 3 was recently delayed a couple of months. Can you talk about the reason for that delay and what's happened in the time since?
Miyamoto: I don't know how far I should go in explaining this, but at Nintendo, there is often sort of a notion that the games I'm working on always get delayed. And in my mind, there's really two kinds of games: games that get delayed and then there's games that sort of shift [laughs]. And in the case of Pikmin, we were working on Pikmin in advance of [the Wii U launch] and I was spending a lot of time focusing on placement of items and enemies and things like that and levels. And so from my perspective, Pikmin gradually just became one of those games that sort of shifted [laughs]. I'm sorry. I know everybody is waiting for it.
Miyamoto: When I create a game, I don't necessarily always try to approach it from the idea of leveraging every feature or every ability of that new piece of hardware. In the case of Pikmin in particular, the approach that we took was really less of an approach of how can we [...] take advantage of what the Wii U is doing, per se, and instead how can we take what was that Pikmin experience and really make it a deeper experience for players.
So of course we're taking advantage of the graphics and improving the play control and whatnot and I guess if you were to look at it more broadly, you might not necessarily say that it would be impossible to do it on another system. But I guess speaking plainly, the idea is really that Wii U is the best system to be able to achieve all of the different things that we're trying to do with this new Pikmin game. One of the biggest features of Pikmin 3 is the fact that you have the map on the GamePad at all times and because Pikmin is a strategy game, it's the type of game that you might play the same levels over and over again. Having that map--and the fact that you have the three different leaders that you switch between to command your Pikmin--and having the touchscreen on the map will allow you to change perspective or jump to a specific leader and quickly give orders.It makes it much more efficient for you to achieve the goals that you have strategically within the game.
GameSpot: Pikmin 3 was recently delayed a couple of months. Can you talk about the reason for that delay and what's happened in the time since?
Miyamoto: I don't know how far I should go in explaining this, but at Nintendo, there is often sort of a notion that the games I'm working on always get delayed. And in my mind, there's really two kinds of games: games that get delayed and then there's games that sort of shift [laughs]. And in the case of Pikmin, we were working on Pikmin in advance of [the Wii U launch] and I was spending a lot of time focusing on placement of items and enemies and things like that and levels. And so from my perspective, Pikmin gradually just became one of those games that sort of shifted [laughs]. I'm sorry. I know everybody is waiting for it.
