Meh. Pikmin 3 didn't interest me enough to spend more than a few hours on it, and Pikmin 2 didn't do much for me, either. It's too soon for another Pikmin game, and I'm done giving that franchise chances. If Nintendo's going to throw money away on a game that's going to bomb anyway, I'd rather they threw that money at a new Metroid or (heaven forbid) a new IP.

Awesome news.  I have thoroughly enjoyed Pikmin 3, and really liked both of the first two games as well.  I'm a little surprised to hear that a new one is coming so soon after how long it took to release 3.  It's obviously not for NX if it's coming as soon as it sounds, so I wonder if this is to help fill out the early 2016 release schedule on Wii U or if they're finally going to make a handheld version.  I'd guess Wii U since it'd be easy enough to make a new game using the Pikmin 3 assets but DS/3DS always seemed like it would work well for the series.

Oooooh, that is VERY good news.

He's been talking about the next game in the Pikmin franchise for a while now, and I assumed it was just a hypothetical game, not something that's actually in development. I assume this is a quick sequel using Pikmin 3 assets to fill out the lineup, EAD 4 can't have only been working on Mario Maker all this time.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpgyccs3q41qal8n4.gif

Wow! That's crazy news today. The Pikmin series is starting to have one of the weirdest release schedules of all Nintendo franchises. *Thinks about the releases of other Nintendo franchises* Actually, I guess this is pretty normal for Nintendo.

Still, from the time it took Pikmin 3 to come out and with the sales it had, I'm amazed that Pikmin 4 is near completion. As Rise9 pointed out, it's got to be because they've already got a lot of assets they can reuse from Pikmin 3 to make development cheaper and have a faster turnaround time. With the time it took to develop Pikmin 3 and Nintendo's statements of not wanting to make a sequel unless they have a new idea for a franchise, I wonder what the reason they'll have for making this is and what the gameplay is to be like for this game compared to Pikmin 3.

Pikmin 3 is something like half a million in Japan alone.

This is great to hear.  Pikmin 3 made me fall in love with the franchise in a way that 1 and 2 did not.  Simply using the same assets with a new story would be enough for me to buy it, but I can also see a couple of obvious avenues for improvement.  Foremost, the story mode should have a two-player co-op this time.  I suppose there could also be some clever online integration.

Great news!!! I loved Pikmin 3 and would love to get another entry in the series.

Waiting for hardware advances for Mario Galaxy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUKcSiAPJoQ

i'd hope they can reach the fidelity this single dude is doing.

They're waiting for Metroid too right? If they can have Metroid and Zelda ready for launch and have Mario soon after, that would be pretty sweet.

A new, possibly Wii U game? Can we gloat now :p
While the words you hint strongly at a Wii U release, I'll be cautious until Nintendo says so.


This casts the touchscreen-controls patch and the recent, post-release demo in different light. Since Pikmin 3 was developed as a Wii game first, it didn't take advantage of the Wii U GamePad as much as some would've liked. Perhaps the development team found something with experimenting on the Pikmin 3 touchscreen controls on the GamePad.

While VGchartz is unreliable, it does say that Pikmin 3 sold about 930k globally. Not sure if that's a bomb for Nintendo's coffers, though it is for a lot of other big companies. I'll grant you that Metroid Prime 3 and Metroid: Other M both sold 1.79m and 1.33m, respectively. As for new IP, hey, we got Code Name: STEAM and Splatoon this year. They can't press their luck all the time (though maybe they should).

Bear in mind that once upon a time, Nintendo said that Zelda Wii U was very close to completion. I'll believe that Pikmin 4 is actually releasing soon and on Wii U when I'm holding the case in my hands.

Pikmin 3 is a really good game. If they chose to re-use the assets and churn out a sequel pretty quickly, I'd be totally ok with that.

When was this? I can't find anything on it, do you mean Skyward Sword?

I was referring to Miyamoto & Aunuma's appearance at last year's Video Game Awards w/ Zelda as well as Nintendo's many, many, MANY assurances that Zelda Wii U was coming out this year...until it wasn't and suddenly Nintendo wouldn't talk about it or show it again. Point is, game developers say a lot of things to try to garner false hype, and Nintendo's well-known for making empty promises when it comes to release windows.

Yeah, gotta love that Pikmin hype, on an interview that done on July and embargoed until today. One game is likely being made using plenty of assets from the previous entry in the series. The other is being made from scratch.

Well since Pikmin 3 is one of the few titles that I really want to get a Wii U for it would be nice if another Pikmin made it to the Wii U and gave me an extra title to justify the console purchase.  Yeah, they probably can make a derivative sequel pretty easy using the same engine.  I don't care for sequels made with that mentality but Pikmin hasn't been overexposed yet so it's not a big deal.

Assuming this does end up on the Wii U then Pikmin gets two games on the Gamecube, skips a generation, and then two on the Wii U.  Is there some unofficial rule here that Pikmin is to only get new releases on underperforming Nintendo consoles?  At least they're making Pikmin 4 and didn't come to some idiotic conclusion that Pikmin isn't marketable based on sales of a game on a failed platform.  The jury should still be out on almost every Wii U game in terms of their true sales potential as they have all been restricted by the low console sales.

Skipping my rumbling thoughts of semantics, honesty, the fluid nature of video game development, and uncontrollable interpretations by enthusiasts...

... so we can be glib once it comes out! :p

Might want to fix the article. It wasn't a July interview, Europe uses the day/month/year format, so even though it says it was published on 07/09/2015, that means it was published September 7, 2015.

I still haven't finished Pikmin 3, don't know why since I loved Pikmin and Pikmin 2.

Pikmin 3 didn't bomb though.  Unlike the rest of the industry, Nintendo is actually good at keeping their budgets for games in check.  Pikmin 3's budget wasn't the highest thing in the world and we know just from NPD and Japanese sales it managed over 500k from just physical sales at full price alone.  If you add in whatever digital and Europe, as well as the fact the game had DLC for people to buy which a good amount of the fans probably did, the game probably did decent.

Not every game needs to sell Mario and Pokemon level numbers to be considered a success to Nintendo.  Yeah many of their Wii U games aren't selling what they did on previous systems but Nintendo is very realistic when it comes to what they spend on game development.  There's a reason Nintendo isn't shutting down studio's because a game didn't sell 5 million just to break even.

I quoted the source on that one: "Speaking during an interview held back in July, Nintendo's top designer revealed that work on a fourth major Pikmin game was well underway."

First Picross 3D 2, and now this. Pretty good stretch for game announcements as far as I'm concerned.

lol is see words well underway and close to completion and i wonder what is lost in translation. We're all Nintendog's trying to get a piece of meat.

Hmm. So either Eurogamer got it wrong, or they waited at least 6 weeks to report on the interview

Nintendo is not a stranger to weird embargoes and non-disclosure agreements.

Also, you can tell this was an delayed report of an interview because Eurogamer would've (gently) pressed for any comment on Iwata's passing if this was a recent interview.

Eurogamer has confirmed the interview was embargoed until yesterday.

Do people really want a Mario game that looks like this?
(More to the point, am I the only one who actively doesn't?)

There are parts of that Mario demo that I like and parts I don't.  I don't really want Mario to look like real life.  However the NSMB Mario style is incredibly dull and generic and I would like them to experiment a little more.  The Mario models they use these days look like they were intentionally designed to not push the hardware and be exchangeable between the handheld and console.  SSB tends to give the Mario characters a little more visual pizzazz than the "real" Mario game have since the Gamecube and that's more the style I would like.

I would love it to look realistic, I just would want the architecture to be mario-esque. 1:23 2:18  3:39 fit the aesthetic of Mario pretty well. Obviously its Mario running around in generic pre-made unreal backgrounds. Nintendo did a pretty good job with Galaxy with the environments, they did an amazing job on Mario Kart 8. They could bump those up further on an NX installment. Actually Mario Kart 8 perfectly balances realistic and whimsical.

I don't think any of the environments suit Mario at all, but it's a good showcase for really cool different types of lighting that a Galaxy type game could benefit from.

It bears saying that two of the times Nintendo's made a quick sequel re-using the previous entry's assets we got two of the greatest games they've ever released (Majora's Mask and SMG2 of course)

If Pikmin 4 is to Pikmin 3 as SMG2 was to SMG, this better be a Wii U game and I can't wait to play it.

Good news! Though I don't expect to play it for at least a year at the earliest.


I still really want to go through Pikmin 3 again and get all the fruit. Between kids and Smash I just have the hardest time going through games multiple times these days.

Donkey Kong Country led to Donkey Kong Country 2. The original Pikmin led to Pikmin 2. Mario Party led to Mario Party 2. NSMBU led to NSLU. Although there isn't a lot of examples available percentage-wise, when Nintendo releases a sequel to a property of theirs in the same generation as the original, the sequel is often considered superior or at least equal as in the case of Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2.

To put it concisely: Get. PUMPED!

Adding to Khush's list, Super Mario Galaxy led to Super Mario Galaxy 2 which was the superior game according to most.