Miyamoto wonders why Pikmin hasn't sold more and why people think the games are difficult
Miyamoto wonders why Pikmin hasn't sold more and why people think the games are difficult
Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto wonders why the Pikmin series hasn't sold more and why people think it's so difficult.
Seems like time and time again, Nintendo is always trying to sell games to an audience of people who do not wish to play video games. For a sequel, I figured Nintendo should focus on their core audience of Pikmin fans but it seems like they're always changing things to appeal to people who don't play games while in return alienating the people who want more sophisticated gameplay and challenges.
What are your thoughts?
I absolutely loved the Pkimin 4 Demo. Having played all 3 prior games, 4 resonated better with more emphasis on exploration and removing the "you have X days" pressure. Made it far more enjoyable personally.
The only thing I really wish they hadn't eliminated was proper co-op. My son was very disappointed that all I could do was throw rocks and items rather than run around the world with him.
51What? That was going to be the main reason I played this. It was so good for me and my girlfriend to play togsther, she loved it. What the fuck is with these companies not making coop games anymore? Do they think noone has friends?
18Technically Pikmin 3 also didn't have co-op when it first released, that was a feature added with Pikmin 3 Deluxe. However definitely extremely disappointed they removed it for 4. Maybe it can be added later, but likely not until they release DLC or another Deluxe version...
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32Reminds me of the Vampire Survivors guy saying he really liked One Step From Eden's main menu and wanted to do the same.
Open game. Press X three times. You're playing. Perfection.
3I didn't play the demo and I went into the game blind today. I'm feeling this so much I want to abandon the game. I hope it'll be fun but the start has been excruciating so far. 10 seconds of tutorial/dialog every 5 seconds of gameplay. WTF?! It's intense, I'm pushing through, but I'm not having fun yet...
1The tutorial is a reason to not do another playthrough of Breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom.
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Most Nintendo games aren't worth $60. Most console games aren't worth $60.
22Executive: great analysis. $70 it is
15I heard you can download and emulate Nintendo games for free and they play at better resolution and frame rate when emulated. I don’t know anything about that though….
8Hollow Knight felt like a $60 game I got for $15.
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It feels like these games are just marketed to people who already know what Pikmin is. They’ve put 4 out at an absolutely dreadful time too… The average player is still chugging through TOTK!
21Tears of the Kingdom is going to last me until the end of the year. I'm taking as long as I need to finish it. Especially since I just found a damn colosseum in the depths where I have to fight 4 God damn Lynels. God I hate those guys lol
10I've not even found a Lynel in that game yet!
4@Nintendianajones64 @steve228uk it’s a hard challenge if you aren’t prepared lol, I had to use every trick I had to beat it. You do get majoras mask though which is worthwhile.
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14Yeah it's a common complaint of Majora's Mask, too, even though it's less of a time limit and more of a timeline that you repeat over and over. It's just that extra mental barrier for people to deal with, that seems like it affects some people more.
I hear the time limit isn't in Pikmin 4 though?
9As someone who gets random fragments of time for spare time (due to being a key participant in too many family activities to have a consistent schedule--aka, parenting) any game that requires me to optimize a non-trivial activity to fit into a specific amount of time is rarely even worth my checking out. I have between 2-5 hours per week, in increments from 25m to 90m, for gaming. Often I'm exhausted from trying to fit things into my schedule during the day. I don't need to think about doing stuff for a schedule in my 'fun' time.
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I love Pikmin, always have. I will always go out of my way to Pikup one of these games.
7Well that's Nintendo for you. I got disappointed by the Yoshi and Kirby going kindergarten level difficulty, so I haven't buy any sequal on switch. It looks cute and have nice mechanism, and maybe some harder extra level that's not required for completion dotted around. But it's not enough, like even little big planet have more variety of difficulty than wiiu/switch Yoshi/Kirby. And LBP isn't a hard game to begin with.
Cute and hard game with proper progression is how you curate a new generation of players. Cause they ain't playing gore flying hack-and-slash from 5yo.
3Are you talking about Yoshi’s Crafted World? I found some of those bosses genuinely hard when you didn’t play on Easy mode with the wings on.
Two player also made it a lot easier, but my second player was my 5 year old, and he definitely couldn’t have beat it without help.
2Yeah, designing games geared towards kids and younger audiences isn't just about story/aesthetics, it's also about difficulty. Most young kids don't have the attention span or critical thinking skills to sit there and try to beat an enemy or puzzle that older kids or adults would find genuinely challenging.
I could split Nintendo games (I've played) into three groups based on target audience:
Younger: cute art style, simple challenges, short game play for young children; Kirby, Yoshi
All Ages: easy-to-learn basics to get you through the main game, but there's more complex stuff and greater challenge if you want it; mostly pick-up-and-play but not TOO short; Mario, Pokemon, DK Country, Super Smash Bros.
Older Gamers: more (relatively) mature subject matter, challenge from the beginning, complex mechanics and/or puzzles or both to get teen/adult brains going; Metroid, Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Zelda BotW and TotK (previous Zelda games would be in my All Ages tier)
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I never really played Pikmin as a kid so I don't have the same nostalgia-hook like I do for Mario and Zelda games. I'm not trying to spend $60 on a game I don't know if I will like and don't have prior experience with, especially when I can get a baller indie game on my Steam Deck for $10-$15.
3I think the tutorial for Pikmin 4 is boring and painful for people who already know the deal. And I think the constant, slow interruptions absolutely kill the pacing, at least at the beginning.
I'm there for the gameplay loop, not to read the same recycled trash dialogue that every Pikmin game has, and it's ridiculously similar to other basic games, too.
The devs seem to think I'd rather watch the UI do pretty things than play the game, and they couldn't be more wrong. Maybe that crap snappy, let me skim through dialogue at rocket speed, and let's get on with the fun.
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3What gets me the most is that we're talking about the same company who created Super Mario Bros., a game famous for it's lack of tutorial. People call the level design "genius" because it teaches you what power-ups and enemies are immediately.
What in the actual frick happened to this? Didn't Miyamoto create Mario for crying out loud? What happened to these core principles? Money? Demographics for children?
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The amount of text bubbles in Pikmin 2 seemed reasonable, and could be accelerated by clicking a button. I think the over-tutorializing only started in Pikmin 3, when Nintendo started outsourcing development to Eighting.
It's been a while so I might be misremembering this, but I think a similar thing happened to the Luigi's Mansion series with LM2 when they started outsourcing to Next Level Games.
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0This isn't an indicator of anything for Nintendo. They have many exclusive games and all are around $60, even one released 10 years ago and many of those games sold tons and still sell tons.
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I never really played Pikmin. Never had a Nintendo console other than GBC growing up. Then I played DS/3DS and a Switch. I don’t get the appeal now that it’s fourth entry in the series.
0You absolutely can start with 4. The worst thing that can happen is that you love it and are slightly disappointed when you try the first 3 games after 4. It could be worse.
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Nintendo has this weird habit of thinking extremely little of their players and assuming they are simply too stupid to play video games, and therefore need to have their hands held or be distracted with flashy gimmicks. Their actual base gameplay mechanics are some of the best in the business but they rarely actually ask the player to apply themselves. I don't think anyone likes to be condescended to. If it weren't for Metroid and Zelda, I don't think I'd put up with their underpowered shield tablet.
-1I didn't pick it up because it's a full priced game, and it's just pikmin again. Great there's a dog now.
Nintendo has a big sequelitis problem these days, for every new idea they have they have a bare bones sequel to some ip that's the same thing as ever.
-7That's kind of a strange complaint, given that there's always so many complaints about Nintendo ruining core gameplay mechanics in sequels. Lots of us want sequels as long as the gameplay loop hasn't changed much beyond adding a few new features. I would kill for another Paper Mario with PPM 64/Thousand Year Door mechanics but they're just straight up averse to doing exactly what you're accusing them of for a lot of their game series.
3it's not a strange opinion, it's just different from yours. we have different opinions. you want sequels that are the same, I want sequels that are different.
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