Nintendo Hints at Pikmin 4 and "Spinoff" Games

A statement from Nintendo's iconic game designer and senior managing director Shigeru Miyamoto made during the company's recent Q&A session with analysts indicates that we'll see another Pikmin game in the future.

Miyamoto hinted at another Pikmin game while explaining how Nintendo was using the recently released Pikmin 3 animated shorts and a playable demo to keep promoting the game. "Continually launching campaigns after the release of software will lay the groundwork for the next iteration of 'Pikmin' in the future," he said. "And needless to say, we want it to be one of the motivations for potential consumers to purchase Wii U. We are making a variety of different efforts."

Miyamoto also said that the company is working on what he calls "spinoff software," smaller-scale games which will support its character IP while it takes more time to work on major releases.

Finally, Miyamoto explained that Nintendo plans to keep partnering with other developers to release more games that take advantage of its beloved characters, as it did with Koei Tecmo on Hyrule Warriors. "Looking at this year alone, we have started to work with second- and third-parties that we have not collaborated with before," he said. "Since we can collaborate with an increasing number of outside companies, we are now making progress to develop a number of games that will become key software for us. I have a solid feeling that Wii U will have a rich software lineup in 2015. We will do our best!"

Check out GameSpot's wrap-up of the November Direct presentation to catch up with the latest Nintendo news.