E3 2008: New Galaxy, Pikmin and DS Mario Coming?
Miyamoto drops some not-so-vague hints.
by Matt Casamassina
July 15, 2008 - At the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2008, we made it our mission to bombard Nintendo producer Shigeru Miyamoto with nearly unanswerable questions about possible games in development -- because, frankly, that's how we roll. Although he politely explained that he could not announce new products to us, we would not relent and we did come away with a few not-so-vague hints about projects underway. Namely, a new Pikmin title for Wii, a sequel to Mario Galaxy and a DS sequel to New Super Mario Bros.
"There isn't anything that we can announce right now, but I'm sure we'll probably do something with it," Miyamoto said of a Wii Pikmin sequel. "The Pikmin team is, of course, still there and maybe we'll have something to talk about before too long." We like the sound of that.
In regard to a new New Super Mario Bros. for DS, Miyamoto tried to throw us off guard with trickery about not being able to announce unfinished projects. "That team is also working hard," he said. "The thing that's difficult is that, as you know, the way we handle our announcement is we work on product and once the product is at a state where we feel it's ready to show to people, then that's when we're willing to talk about it. Which is why it's difficult for me to talk about different projects in interviews. I have a lot of different teams and those teams are all at different points in their experiments or development, so it's typically once they've finalized something that we're able to talk about it. But for me to go into too much detail would be a little bit irresponsible in an interview. All that I can say is that that team is also working."
When we pressed him for more, Miyamoto added, "Maybe the best thing for you to understand is that all of the leaders of those teams -- of the Mario team, of the Zelda team and of the Pikmin team -- all sit within 150 feet of my desk. The Galaxy team is the only one that's farther away -- they're in Tokyo. But I do have video conferencing with them."
We stunned him with a hard-hitting follow-up: 'We don't really have a question. We just want you to make another Galaxy game.' To this, Miyamoto replied, "Leave it to me."
