Nintendo just had an impressive E3 showing as part of its annual Nintendo Direct streaming conference, presenting such impressive new games such as a brand new sequel to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the just-this-week release date for musical Zelda spin-off Cadence of Hyrule, and a couple of surprising characters coming to Smash Bros Ultimate. However, a few notable titles were absent, including the anticipated Pikmin 4. So why was Pikmin 4 missing from this year’s Nintendo Direct E3 conference?
The latest release in the Pikmin series was the snappily titled Hey! Pikmin for 3DS, a 2D take on the classic strategy that wasn’t bad at all, but also wasn’t what fans of the series really wanted, which was a full sequel. Pikmin 3 was released on Wii U in 2013 after a lot of delays, and it’s well regarded, but at the same time it’s now 6 years since it was released and we haven’t even had a full official announcement of Pikmin 4.
The game is coming, however. Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto (who is the creator of the Pikmin series) confirmed that not only was Pikmin 4 in development, he noted that it was “actually very close to completion.” The weird and confusing thing is, he actually said those words way back in 2015. A year later, he spoke with Game Rant and confirmed: “We’re working on [Pikmin 4]. So, you know, when we’re in development we have to create a list of priorities and it has been hard to kind of fit that into that list, but we’re hopefully starting to see that on the list now.”
Essentially Pikmin 4 was delayed, but that was in 2016 and we haven’t heard anything since, despite it being “close to completion” in 2015. It’s possible Nintendo may be planned on reinvigorating the formula somehow, and hopefully, fans won’t be waiting until E3 2020 until they get to find out just what that new spaceship landing or crashing at the end of Pikmin 3 was all about.
