During Nintendo’s E3 2011 press conference yesterday, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata took to the stage to casually announce that a new Super Smash Bros. game is in the works for both Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS .
That’s undoubtedly exciting news for Smash fans but, according to Project Sora lead Masahiro Sakurai, Nintendo might have jumped the gun just a bit on the announcement.
“We really shouldn’t have announced it for the general public at this timing, but since we have to assemble staff, we made the notice,” he said in a tweet (via Andriasang).
One of Nintendo’s comparatively lesser known but still beloved franchises, Pikmin , was noticeably absent from Nintendo’s E3 press conference. Fans have been clamoring for a new Pikmin for quite some time now and, while it wasn’t announced during the press conference, it looks like Pikmin will finally be returning on the Wii U – and, unlike with the new Smash Bros. , work has already begun on the title.
According to a report from Joystiq , Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto told press in attendance at an E3 roundtable event that a new Pikmin would be coming to the Wii U at some point. Pikmin 3 , as it’s called, has actually been in development for some time now and was originally scheduled to launch on the Wii. When the Wii U’s development started reaching the final stages before its announcement, Nintendo decided to move it to their new console.
It’s a bummer that we don’t have any screenshots or a trailer to go by, but knowing that the Wii U will be bringing back two of my personal favorite Nintendo franchises has at least bumped my interest in the Wii U. How about you?
