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Pre-Release Pikmin 4 — Pre-release Discussion (UPDATE: "Your First Expedition with Pikmin" trailer, see threadmarks)

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Raccoon said:
singular playable character???

I am once again asking you all to play Pikmin 3 Deluxe for Nintendo Switch
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I haven't tried it. I'm unwilling to sacrifice the wii u gamepad lol. It's one of the few games for the system that actually utilized it in a really cool and useful way!
 
This announcement made me decide to try Pikmin 3 out. I’ve only played the Wii remake of the original game but it’s been so long I can’t remember any of it. Pikmin 3 Deluxe is awesome, super looking forward to Pikmin 4 now!
 
I wonder what release timing they're going to target for this game. I've been feeling like September is the best spot for it.

This is Nintendo's chance to really try and grow the Pikmin franchise after the success of Pikmin 3 Deluxe and the popularity of the Switch. So I can't see them putting it too close to Zelda and letting that overshadow this. But it's also not big enough to be "the" holiday game so I don't think they'd target October or November for it either.
 
The graphics and ground difference between Pikmin 3 and 4 is huge. This is legit one of the games I’m most excited to see on Switch Drake.

 
While I hate to be that guy, the asset quality for Pikmin 4 is extremely good. They look like assets built for a 4K game. The texture quality is very high here. My personal opinion is that either this game is likely going to get majorly downgraded upon release like Breath of the Wild was or this game is being built with a 4K capable system in mind. The asset quality as we are seeing in the official footage, doesn't look possible in my opinion on current hardware but who knows. Maybe I'm wrong and some how the game will actually look this good at 1080p on old Switch hardware. I know a LOT of folks are burned out on the fabled 4K Switch theories and I don't blame anyone for that.
 
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LukasManak22 said:
Here is what happened, full story. Purely speculation on my part, of course.

It's July 2013. Pikmin 3 releases for the Wii U.

At some point before, or few months after. The development of Super Mario Maker begins. Before anyone starts, I know how EPD groups work and it's just not like the one EPD group shares the same staff on every game they made. But I know that Shigefumi Hino, Pikmin 3 Director went to work on Maker after Pkmin 3, he also then worked on Maker 2.

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So, we are in 2013. Pressumably both Pikmin 4 for the Wii U and Super Mario Maker are in full development.

Fast forward to Spring 2014. the "NX" or Switch if you want is now in full development. Koizumi as a General Producer and Kawamoto as a General Director are brought up to development by Iwata himself.

At this point you may assume that they maybe considered Pikmin for a new hardware at the time but that's not the case since in 2014 Nintendo somewhat thought they could save the Wii U. Remember E3 2014? Zelda, Mario Maker, Splatoon, Star Fox. All of these games were scheduled for release in 2015.

We must now skip to the infamous interview in September 2015. The interview itself was not actually taking place in September tho, it was July of 2015. It was then published 2 months later, but that's irrelevant. The quote itself "it's actually very close to completion". I don't think Miyamoto was actually reffering to it's development or what not, he maybe ment concepts or something, the fact that Miyamoto does not speak much English at all also does not help since his words need to be translated back and many things could be also in translation. But. Do you actually think that the Pikmin 4 could be "close to being done" just 2 years after Pikmin 3 released? They maybe were using some assets and what not but that seems really small development time, even with some EPD10 staff making Super Mario Maker at that time. And we know that Nintendo is sometimes weird with these estimates remember how BOTW went? I know problems with engine and such but they assumed they will release BOTW in just 34 months (January 2013 to roughly November 2015) if that game would be released in 2015.

At this point, when he last reffered to it in 2017 it's safe to say that it was already rebooted, because he talks about "progressing" and "told not to share anything from PR" that just sounds like we will not see it anytime soon. And as I say previously, we don't know when it was rebooted, it could be in 2016, it could be in 2017, it could be in 2018. I don't actually think that it needed to be rebooted multiple time, I just think it was rebooted when Wii U version needed to be scrapped. So somewhere between 2015 - 2016. But that quote from Miyamoto himself is still curious, maybe the game itself was ment to be swan song for the Wii U and could be released in 2016 but then they realized it would not make any sense and since the game was never officially announced for the public it was somewhat fine. Yes, it was announced by press release by NOA and talked in few interviews but aside from that? Nothing, so it was somewhat safe for them to scrap the game for Wii U.

Development of Maker 2 itself probably has not helped much either (again, don't compared the full staff so I don't have the full picture here), but I think it's still relevant. Miyamoto working on Mario Run in probably good chunk of 2016 is also a point, or his theme park involment, and the movie from like 2017 onwards.

TLDR: I think that the development was probably rebooted only once, and that was when they made the change from Wii U to Switch. Other factors also played a role and the game was probably never in full active development till like late 2018 to somewhere in 2019. Remember, it was not until mid 2020 when Pikmin 3 Deluxe released, and year later Bloom was released too. It all makes sense now, it was a preparation for a new title to come, to starting people see Pikmin again when Pikmin 4 comes.
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Pikmin games don't actually take that long to make. I believe Miyamoto was being sincere during the infamous 2015 interview. Let's review the development cycles of the previous games:

Pikmin 1 - ~1.5 years (Assuming development started after the Mario 128 demo, this would be from mid 2000-October 2001)
Pikmin 2 - 2.5 years (2002-mid 2004. Miyamoto initially planned to complete this in one year but the game was delayed for further revisions, and it's implied the last 6 months were crucial to development.)
Pikmin 3 (Wii prototype) - 3 years (2008-2011)
Pikmin 3 (Wii U) - 2.5 years (2011-mid 2013. Even then it looks like most of the work was done in the last ~1.5 years of development, as the footage and information revealed in 2012 differed a great deal from the final product)

Now if Miyamoto suggested in mid-2015 that Pikmin 4 was "close to completion" and if development started soon after Pikmin 3's release ("Pikmin teams are always working on the next one") that gives us a period of ~2.5 years assuming they planned for an additional 6 months of dev time. That cycle would match up with the rest of the series.

The delays can simply be chalked up to Miyamoto's perfectionism, hardware reboots and the series being low priority compared to more successful franchises. With this game being the first new entry for the Switch, hopefully things turn around with Pikmin 4 and we start seeing the series on a more consistent basis.
 
Zerio920 said:
Pikmin games don't actually take that long to make. I believe Miyamoto was being sincere during the infamous 2015 interview. Let's review the development cycles of the previous games:

Pikmin 1 - ~1.5 years (Assuming development started after the Mario 128 demo, this would be from mid 2000-October 2001)
Pikmin 2 - 2.5 years (2002-mid 2004. Miyamoto initially planned to complete this in one year but the game was delayed for further revisions, and it's implied the last 6 months were crucial to development.)
Pikmin 3 (Wii prototype) - 3 years (2008-2011)
Pikmin 3 (Wii U) - 2.5 years (2011-mid 2013. Even then it looks like most of the work was done in the last ~1.5 years of development, as the footage and information revealed in 2012 differed a great deal from the final product)

Now if Miyamoto suggested in mid-2015 that Pikmin 4 was "close to completion" and if development started soon after Pikmin 3's release ("Pikmin teams are always working on the next one") that gives us a period of ~2.5 years assuming they planned for an additional 6 months of dev time. That cycle would match up with the rest of the series.

The delays can simply be chalked up to Miyamoto's perfectionism, hardware reboots and the series being low priority compared to more successful franchises. With this game being the first new entry for the Switch, hopefully things turn around with Pikmin 4 and we start seeing the series on a more consistent basis.
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I never assumed that the game was in development the whole time, I even made that clear. Also, you can't really compare dev times back then and now, it's completely different story, better hardware = more dev time.
 
LukasManak22 said:
I never assumed that the game was in development the whole time, I even made that clear. Also, you can't really compare dev times back then and now, it's completely different story, better hardware = more dev time.
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I was moreso arguing the idea that they couldn't develop a new Pikmin game in 2 and a half years, especially if they were working off the base of 3.
 
Terrell said:
You make it sound like that’s not what grooming a a new IP producer also entails. It’s like saying Aonuma or Nogami (who are people who went through this process) are creatively bankrupt and have no vision partly informed by their predecessors.
For all we know, this process has already been happening (albeit more slowly) with either Shigefumi Hino or Hiroyuki Kimura, both of whom have been involved in the franchise since day 1 (except Pikmin 2, Kimura was missing in the producer credits of that one).
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Don't forget this guy.
 
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Arlo parsing Miyamoto’s sentences and getting worried because Miyamoto is overlooking it lol. I guess he had a little worry about controls and referenced Star Fox Zero. I don’t think we have to worry though because the worst you can do is use the 2 joycons (I guess)?

 
Dark Cloud said:
Arlo parsing Miyamoto’s sentences and getting worried because Miyamoto is overlooking it lol. I guess he had a little worry about controls and referenced Star Fox Zero. I don’t think we have to worry though because the worst you can do is use the 2 joycons (I guess)?

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Miyamoto being the scape goat number one for certain fanbases is really tiring. Almost as tiring as all the Tanabe hate.
 
Forget the game, who's excited to see Miyamoto talk about Pikmin 4 for 2 years straight after launch like he did with Pikmin 3 :p
 
I remember Nintendo's early days of gaming when we were always lead to believe that he did everything.

Now he's known as just the Pikmin and Star Fox guy.

Also I feel bad for Shigefumi Hino.
 
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BooDestroyer said:
I remember Nintendo's early days of gaming when we were always lead to believe that he did everything.

Now he's known as just the Pikmin and Star Fox guy.

Also I feel bad for Shigefumi Hino.
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I mean, im extremely glad we started to notice the actual directors of the games, notnjust miyamoto but in general.
 
Miyamoto's been producer on many things these days. But "director" and "producer" and probably interchangeable at this point.

Honestly, I feel that Sakurai ruined everyone's definition of the term "director", but that's another story for another time.
 
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My main wish for this game is for it to be a bit more challenging than 3. Even simply having a more difficult post-game area like Wistful Wild would be great. I mean in Pikmin 3 the most difficult 'post-game' area was a tiny part of a cave with a Bulbear. Those shits should be main game
 
The controls for Pikmin 3 on Switch were a bit flawed. At least playing with gyro controls. One had to push the reset button constantly. I‘m glad they look for something more intuitive.
 
I don't think the controls were flawed at all. Hitting reset time to time is just a thing with gyro and I don't think it really is that constant. I have never understood what is the problem with it. Same thing with Skyward Sword etc. Of Course it could be better if you wouldn't have to do that but I don't see the problem.

I think it is like camera in games but less cumbersome. In 3d games you usually have to adjust camera which is much more bigger thing than pressing one button time to time. It isn't really part of the actual gameplay. It is just something you have to do to be able to play the game. Just like resetting gyro. I really don't think resetting gyro means the controls are flawed.
 
Mr Doggo said:
I mean, im extremely glad we started to notice the actual directors of the games, notnjust miyamoto but in general.
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BooDestroyer said:
Miyamoto's been producer on many things these days. But "director" and "producer" and probably interchangeable at this point.

Honestly, I feel that Sakurai ruined everyone's definition of the term "director", but that's another story for another time.
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FWIW, the "director" and "producer" is a western thing, not based on how Nintendo runs their business. Kyoto Report uses "Group Manager", "Sub Manager" and "Project Leader" as the English translation for the different positions.
 
Discokuningas said:
I don't think the controls were flawed at all. Hitting reset time to time is just a thing with gyro and I don't think it really is that constant. I have never understood what is the problem with it. Same thing with Skyward Sword etc. Of Course it could be better if you wouldn't have to do that but I don't see the problem.

I think it is like camera in games but less cumbersome. In 3d games you usually have to adjust camera which is much more bigger thing than pressing one button time to time. It isn't really part of the actual gameplay. It is just something you have to do to be able to play the game. Just like resetting gyro. I really don't think resetting gyro means the controls are flawed.
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I thoroughly agree with this. It would have benefitted from sensitivity settings and the port's lock-on is horrible but gyro isn't inherently flawed at all
 
jariw said:
FWIW, the "director" and "producer" is a western thing, not based on how Nintendo runs their business. Kyoto Report uses "Group Manager", "Sub Manager" and "Project Leader" as the English translation for the different positions.
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I said this isnt jusr a pikmin thing and it isnt about the nomenclature of each position, its how the public perceives it.
 
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I was debating picking up P3 Deluxe rather than dusting off the Wii U, but the lack of touchscreen controls in portable mode just seems like such an oversight.

I genuinely hope Pikmin 4 rectifies this and has them included from the get go. I know lots of people swear by Wiimote+ Numchuck, but touchscreen was the superior control method in Pikmin 3. I hate the thought of not having it as an option going forward
 
JazzPotatoes said:
I genuinely hope Pikmin 4 rectifies this and has them included from the get go. I know lots of people swear by Wiimote+ Numchuck, but touchscreen was the superior control method in Pikmin 3. I hate the thought of not having it as an option going forward
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how did this even work in 3???
 
Raccoon said:
how did this even work in 3???
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The control scheme was super elegant.

The two left trigger buttons were your whistle and lock on buttons.

The stylus and touchscreen would handle your aim - you move the stylus to move the aim. Tapping the screen throws your Pikmin.

It's incredibly intuitive and easy to understand, but makes aiming and general gameplay even more accurate.
 
After playing 3 Deluxe with a Pro Controller and Gyro I am absolutely convinced that the franchise is just fine without Touchscreen/WiiMote+
 
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JazzPotatoes said:
The control scheme was super elegant.

The two left trigger buttons were your whistle and lock on buttons.

The stylus and touchscreen would handle your aim - you move the stylus to move the aim. Tapping the screen throws your Pikmin.

It's incredibly intuitive and easy to understand, but makes aiming and general gameplay even more accurate.
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honestly that sounds abysmal but thank you for sharing
 
I have never played a Pikmin game before. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a console that can play the first two. I’ll try to wait a while and see if Pikmin 3 gets a better discount, but I would definitely like to try it.
 
Ibuki said:
I have never played a Pikmin game before. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a console that can play the first two. I’ll try to wait a while and see if Pikmin 3 gets a better discount, but I would definitely like to try it.
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At Amazon.de it’s 22€ as we speak. One of the cheapest Nintendo retail games. Even if you don’t like it, reselling should let you test/play it for less then 10€…
 
Raccoon said:
honestly that sounds abysmal but thank you for sharing
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It's honestly not. It works much better than analogue sticks or gyro, and I would argue works better than IR pointer as well.

It's one of the most efficient translations of your input into on screen action I can think of. If you've used a tablet to write a note or draw or anything like that, it's that straightforward.

In off-TV mode it works even better, as you can just tap the stylus directly onto the the things you want to target.

Anyhoo, I'll stop evangelizing
 
Intoxicate said:
At Amazon.de it’s 22€ as we speak. One of the cheapest Nintendo retail games. Even if you don’t like it, reselling should let you test/play it for less then 10€…
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Sorry it’s about $45 USD here right now. I’m waiting for something more like $30 but it’s not impossible.
 
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I want a area where it rains a lot. So you either have to walk in specific areas with a roof to use most Pikmin but can go out in the rain with the Blue Pikmin.
Heavy rain just adds a lot of atmosphere
 
BlightStar said:
I want a area where it rains a lot. So you either have to walk in specific areas with a roof to use most Pikmin but can go out in the rain with the Blue Pikmin.
Heavy rain just adds a lot of atmosphere
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There's so much potential for something like this. Also, glow-in-the-dark Pikmin during the night or in certain caves.
 
Crucibleclipse said:
There's so much potential for something like this. Also, glow-in-the-dark Pikmin during the night or in certain caves.
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Yass, Green Glow-in-the-dark Pikmin is one of my most wanted ideas. Can be used as a 'excuse' as to why you can now play at night, since those Pikmin 'keeps the others safe' or so.
There is SO much they can do for the series XD
 
Most wanted elements for Pikmin 4:

- Soil plots on the map you can strategically plant Pikmin overnight to avoid enemies. You'd sacrifice their ability to do stuff for the rest of the day, but they'd come out of the ground the next day with a flower and extra strength. Would add a nice extra element of cost/reward

- Night time levels where, for whatever reason, you miss the ship and have to actually fend off the attacks of night time beasties.

- Green Pikmin. They would be weaker than regular Pikmin, but faster at taking stuff back to your ship.

- 4 captains that can be divided into two teams of two. This would mean that in single player, you could get some very intricate multitasking going, and in co-op each player could still multitask and divide work between captains

- Touchscreen controls

- Big Bingo Battle: up to four players, more Pikmin, more items to collect.
 
Interdimensional Pikmin (silver/sparkley): These would have the ability to slow down time, become invisible, and create warp points/portals.

Treasure hunting Pikmin (gold): These Pikmin have a knack for sensing treasure. Collecting treasure would net you with in game currency for upgrades and buying items.

Speedy Pikmin (orange): These Pikmin are weak on the attack, but move super fast. They can dig and carry items much faster than other Pikmin.

Earth Pikmin (green): These Pikmin have the ability to climb then environment that other types can't. They then can link together to form ladders for the squad to climb. Can also link together to become other forms such as a makeshift bridge, a grapple hook to cross gaps, etc.
 
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JazzPotatoes said:
I was debating picking up P3 Deluxe rather than dusting off the Wii U, but the lack of touchscreen controls in portable mode just seems like such an oversight.

I genuinely hope Pikmin 4 rectifies this and has them included from the get go. I know lots of people swear by Wiimote+ Numchuck, but touchscreen was the superior control method in Pikmin 3. I hate the thought of not having it as an option going forward
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I assume the reason why touch controls didn’t come back on Switch is because, for one, the Switch is heavier than the Wii U GamePad so gripping the system with one hand while using the touch screen with the other would be a lot more cumbersome on Switch, and two, the Switch has a capacitive touch screen rather than a resistive one like the Wii U had, the latter of which being much better suited to stylus controls than the former.
 
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Prediction
Illumination was only allowed to make a Mario movie...
If they agreed to make a Pikmin movie, too.
Who's ready for Illumination Pikmin?!
 
BlightStar said:
Prediction
Illumination was only allowed to make a Mario movie...
If they agreed to make a Pikmin movie, too.
Who's ready for Illumination Pikmin?!
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illumination is like the bare minimum studio. They can only make a mario film because that is the easiest film that can be done from a nintendo ip (and even then it will be only decent if we re lucky) and they will fail at anything else

I dont like to imagine them with pikmin.

Id hate them with metroid or zelda lol
 
I know, but that doesn't mean I can't bring this evil upon us just to see the world, and the Pikmen, burn c:
Totally not as a distraction cuz it is still so long until we will get the new game
I want it now
 
I'm hoping they go back to two Captains. I don't really think having 3 added anything, and certainly don't want them to go to four.

Just Captain Olimar and his wife, please.
 
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