Miyamoto talks up Super Mario 3D World, hints at 'new franchise'

One thing Shigeru Miyamoto is definitely not is lazy. With Pikmin 3 out in a few days, Super Mario 3D World coming late this year and Mario Kart following soon after, there's no denying that he and his team are doing everything they can to get the Wii U's software lineup fully fleshed out...and prepared for whatever new comes after that perhaps.

"With 3D World, we're aiming for something where everyone can have fun competing against with each other, not just in co-op," the Nintendo producer told Famitsu magazine. "If it was a straight competition, it'd be hard to tell characters apart from one other, so with this project we introduced different abilities for each character, letting you play in different ways."

Some people on the net expressed surprise that, for a change, Princess Peach is a controllable character and not just someone to get kidnapped yet again. "It is a surprise, isn't it?" Miyamoto said. "With New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the only character you could play as besides Mario and Luigi was Toad, and we did get requests from female players for some other character they could play as. I suppose that, to many women, controlling a guy with a mustache isn't really their first choice! So we thought of a few candidates, and we decide that if we had a Peach like she was in Super Mario Bros. 2 that was able to float a bit, that'd be easy to control for beginners."

Outside of that and some extra multiplayer hijinx, however, don't expect this new Mario game to be anything besides...well, a Mario game. Anything else would go against Miyamoto's philosophy for the franchise. "Mario is a jumping action game, after all," he reasoned. "With a lot of games these days, you have a ton of camerawork and you don't really know what you're doing, but you still get a lot of excitement and exhilaration out of it. I'm not saying those games are bad, but in the end, for us, whether it's Mario or Pikmin, we think it's the most fun if you work out what you're playing in your mind and decide where to go next by your own free will. That's something I think we should ensure stays in what we do."

Miyamoto also took a little time in the interview to mention the Wii U's most recent system update, as well as the new mystery game he's supposedly working on for 2014. "With the most recent version update," he said, "the system runs a lot better, and while there will continue to be improvements in the future, I think it's to the point where it's a convenient thing to have in the living room. Of course, these sorts of updates mean nothing if we don't put out games for it, and I hope people are looking forward to the games coming up. We'll have Mario Kart 8 out next spring, and at that point we'll have the whole lineup in place, so I think it's about time we brought out a new franchise. I can't give out details, but that's the title that's been keeping me pretty busy lately."