The Wii U is an awesome console- it currently has the best lineup of games on the market, and next year looks to be no different, with several high quality games slated for it (including Splatoon, Zelda U, and Star Fox). But it is also a miserable failure, at least from a sales perspective, and though Nintendo is doing good by the people who bought it, they can’t be too eager to keep supporting it any more than necessary.
Today, Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed that work on new Nintendo consoles is already underway- and even better, that we might see a new paradigm shifting Mario game, such as Mario 64 or Mario Galaxy, launch alongside the new console.
“We’re focused on providing a robust line-up of Wii U software for next year,” Miyamoto said.
“It seems like we’ve managed to do that this year and people are very happy with what we’ve done on Wii U. For the time being, our focus is on the Wii U hardware, but Nintendo as a whole has groups working on ideas for new hardware systems. While we’re busy working on software for the Wii U, we have production lines that are working on ideas for what the next system might be.”
Speaking of Mario, this is what he had to say:
“Since we first created Mario, people have compared him to Mickey Mouse. I’ve always said Mickey Mouse evolved with each evolution in animation. You saw Mickey Mouse each step of the way,” he said.
“From early on, I wanted Mario to be that character in the digital world, so that with each digital evolution, he was there to usher in the next era. I think that maybe when we release the next hardware system, you can look forward to seeing Mario take on a new role or in a new game.”
Okay, Nintendo. If you launch your next system alongside a Mario game, it will be a guaranteed success at launch- now the only question is, just when is this new Nintendo system coming? And what will it be like?