Wii U title Pikmin 3 will feature new playable characters – Alph, Brittany and Charlie. In the game, the Wii U GamePad controller is referred to as the “KopPad,” where players can view the overall map and grasp what each character and Pikmin are up to. Nintendo today showcased some new footage from the game, which you can view above. Pikmin 3 launches on July 26th in Europe, and on August 4th in North America.
Thanks, Tilmen.
The launch date for Pikmin 3 has finally been revealed in the latest Nintendo Direct, and it’s coming to Europe much earlier than expected. Pikmin 3 will arrive on the Wii U across Europe on July 26 and will feature three new main characters: Alph, Brittany and captain Charlie. Are you ready to take on the world of Pikmin once again?
Are you ready for this summer’s arrival of Pikmin 3 on the Wii U? Well, this time you’ll meet up with three brand new characters. Instead of the main character Captain Olimar, Pikmin 3 gives you Alph, Brittany and a new captain named Charlie. The travellers have been sent out on a mission to gather food for their planet which is currently facing a doomsday crisis. But due to an accident while travelling in their spaceship, the three explorers crash land into the world of Pikmin. With the help of the little creatures, they bring fruit to their spaceship in order to utilise the seeds back on their home planet. Will you be helping their mission this summer?
Nintendo has revealed that their games for the Wii U console were delayed, in part, as a decision to create ‘delicately crafted’ titles with precise finishing touches. In a question and answer session over the financial results briefing, Satoru Iwata claimed that the decision was made in response to the influx of low-cost titles and intended to give games developers much-needed time to work on a second and third coat of polish.
Iwata said: ”We originally planned to release a few first-party titles for Wii U during the first half of this year, but no big titles are scheduled for release before Pikmin 3 in July because we decided to take time to add the final touches to ensure that consumers fully feel that they are valuable titles. The brand of a franchise would be completely degraded without customer satisfaction. This is why we delayed the release schedule of such games.”
Iwata continued to say that certain Wii U launch titles required more development resources than originally expected and therefore lengthened the delay: ”In short, the development teams of Pikmin 3 and other future games were understaffed during that period.”
He added: “We do not simply have one easily identifiable bottleneck in software development. These days it is becoming increasingly challenging to determine the minimum development resources required for customer satisfaction. [...] A delicately crafted game will never fail to appeal to consumers.”
Nintendo has confirmed that white and purple Pikmin will be making an appearance in the long-awaited Pikmin 3. The Pikmin were spotted after appearing in artwork on the official Pikmin 3 website. The purple Pikmin are exceptionally strong and heavy and they weigh ten times that of the regular Pikmin in Pikmin 2. When a purple Pikmin attacks it does three times as much damage. The white Pikmin are poisonous and they can damage any enemy that decides to take a bite out of them. They’re also immune to poison and are very fast.
Nintendo has confirmed that the sequel to Pikmin 2 is a few months away from release. The Wii U-exclusive Pikmin 3 will launch in stores and in the Nintendo eShop on August 4th. The new game introduces brand-new Pikmin, like the Rock Pikmin and Winged Pikmin.
Great news for Pikmin fans, the new release for Pikmin 3 on the Wii U will feature winged Pikmin – check out the picture here to see them in action. Another new feature will enable them to have the ability to carry items in the air, so they’ll be a pretty wonderful addition to the game. Are you happy about this? Leave us a comment in the section below.
Nintendo designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed to Rolling Stone that Pikmin 3 players will have the ability to control three different captains, each of which leads a group of Pikmin. During gameplay, players can switch between captains, which allows for a more strategic approach, according to Miyamoto. Pikmin 3 is scheduled to release this spring, exclusively for Wii U.
“With Pikmin 3, you’ll have the ability to have three different captains or leaders of Pikmin groups and you can switch between them. So it sort of allows you to approach the game from a much more strategic position. The volume of work that you can get done within the timeframe has increased dramatically. And so that in and of itself really enhances the depth of strategy that’s available to you in that game.”
-Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted that ideally Nintendo would have wanted Pikmin 3 closer to the Wii U launch. Miyamoto doesn’t really have many regrets, as he says that the delay has helped them create fun and interesting new ways to play, including new gameplay systems. He also says that as they become more familiar with the Wii U hardware, the more they are able to get out of it.
From my perspective, I think ideally it would have been nice if we’d been able to release Pikmin 3 closer to launch, but the Wii U — though it shares the Wii name — is obviously a brand new system, with new chips and graphical capabilities. It can do a lot more, and in the process of developing a lot of the features and functionality, the resources required to best utilize those features drew on some of the same resources that might have been spent developing games, thus we weren’t able to bring quite as robust a lineup initially.
At the same time, we still have new things to learn about how to leverage the features and functionalities of Wii U in ways that create fun and interesting new ways to play, including new gameplay systems. As we become even more familiar with the hardware, we’ll be able to do more from a software standpoint. That’s an area we’re currently devoting resources to.
Legendary games designer Shigeru Miyamoto has sat down with GameSpot to talk about all things Nintendo related. One of the questions put to Shigeru Miyamoto was what’s one point of gameplay in Pikmin 3 that he can point to and say “that’s only possible because of what the Wii U can do?” Miyamoto replied to the question with the following answer:
“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.”
