The following comes from a Polygon interview with Shigeru Miyamoto.

On moving from Wii to Wii U

"Well, of course back in the early days, we were working on it based on the Wii hardware. What we quickly found was, particularly for the controls in Pikmin, not just the basic Wii Remote but the Wii Remote with the Motion Plus technology really made the controls more intuitive, and much more precise and accurate for us. That was a big change when we shifted from standard Wii Remote and nunchuck to Motion Plus.

The other was, particularly when we were looking at what would be possible on the Wii U hardware, one of the big things was just the HD visuals and the ability to draw the detailed graphics. The other was, of course, the use of the subscreen on the GamePad. As soon as we saw the convergence of these different elements, we felt that we'd be able to do a much better job if we took this game and put it on the Wii U."

On the release date getting bumped back

"I did want to release it sooner. One of the big challenges was that I think that a lot of people, they hear the name Wii U, and because it shares the Wii name, the assumption is, 'Oh, it would be very easy to take whatever was on Wii and just move it to Wii U, but in fact, the jump in a hardware standpoint, both from the development structure and the chipset within the system, it was such a dramatic change from what we had with Wii that development of the game, we had to recreate it to move it over to Wii U. So that was one of the challenges. I look at it less in terms of Pikmin 3 was delayed, and more in terms of our development was shifted."

On developing Pikmin 3 alongside developing Wii U

"It's actually always like that for us. In fact, people are always telling us, 'Oh, you're so lucky because you're the first ones that get to work with the new hardware,' and our response is always, 'Well, yes, but actually trying to work with a piece of hardware that's not done yet can be quite challenging.'"

On the game's uniqueness, branching out with the Pikmin brand for movies and breadth of play

"There really isn't anything else you can compare Pikmin to. I think even the Pikmin characters are really cute and appealing, and I think there may be opportunities for them to appear not just in games, but in movies and animation or something. I really want people to get the sense that Pikmin could appear anywhere.

The other thing we've done with Pikmin 3 that we feel is very important is we've created it in a way that has a very broad entry point. So, people who've never played the game before can use the pointer controls, with the simple action of calling the Pikmin and throwing the Pikmin, and that's the basic action of the game. Using that basic action, even people who are new to the series, they can eventually get through the game using that basic technique.

Simultaneously, we've built the game so there's a tremendous amount of depth for people who are very avid and experienced gamers, and there's a tremendous amount of freedom in how you play the game — both in terms of devising your strategies in how you get through it, but also in terms of deciding what your objective is in clearing it. You can kind of set your own goals. Do I want to try to play through the game and reach the end without having a single Pikmin die, or is my focus going to be on trying to clear the game in as few game days as possible, or is it, am I going to limit myself in never going above a certain number of Pikmin?"

On the strategy genre being tough to break through with

"Even the word 'strategy' makes it seem difficult — that's why we're calling it an AI action game. Because in this game, the Pikmin essentially are thinking of half of what needs to be done. So the player is able to look at what the Pikmin are able to do, and then simply assign them tasks so they can do it on their own.

Actually, I tend to like strategy games. There were a lot of PC strategy games back in the day, but it's true that until Pikmin I never really managed to take that strategy genre and turn it into a product I thought we could release. I had worked and helped out a little bit on the early Fire Emblem games, which are turn-based strategy, and in terms of the more simulation side of strategy, there was the SimCity port that I worked on, but it's true that I had never before worked on a strategy game myself."

More on Pikmin GBA/DS experiments

"We experimented with Pikmin on the DS, and actually, we experimented with a Pikmin game on Game Boy Advance, but we really felt that the portable machine simply didn't have the capabilities to create the Pikmin gameplay in a way that we felt like it needed to be represented."

On why a portable Pikmin hasn't come together yet

"There's actually one particular facet of this game that we were very focused in on, which was building bridges in Pikmin 3. If you look at it, the bridges are made out of these little tile pieces, and each tile piece is shaped kind of differently, and each individual Pikmin might pick it up and hold the piece in a different way.

We could be able to take something like that element of the Pikmin gameplay and try to do it on a portable, probably what would end up happening is you would have to make all the pieces the same size and shape, and they'd have to carry them the same way. But just like ants, when you watch them carrying leaves, sticks and things all at different angles, that's sort of what makes it cute, and so that was an area that I really focused on in Pikmin 3, and I really tried to bring it to life in the Pikmin. Without that, it really doesn't feel like Pikmin."

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