Shigeru Miyamoto’s been a chatty guy lately: besides dropping some hints about the future of the Mario and Zelda franchises in an interview with Game Informer a few days ago, the legendary game creator also spoke with Japanese gaming mag Famitsu, where he revealed that he’s been working on a brand new franchise that should be revealed sometime next year.
“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,” Miyamoto told Famitsu (translation via Polygon.) “I can’t give out details, but that’s the title that’s been keeping me pretty busy lately.”
There’s been rumors that Miyamoto has been involved with a brand new IP for the last few years, and I suppose those rumors have finally been confirmed. Miyamoto has only played an advisory role in the development of the last few Mario’s and Zelda’s, as this as-yet unnamed new franchise has reportedly taken up most of his time. This will be Miyamoto’s first new IP since the original Pikmin, which was released for the Gamecube in 2001.
Miyamoto also discussed the upcoming Mario 3D Land, particularly the inclusion of Princess Peach as a playable character. “”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,” Miyamoto said. “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.”
You can read more of Miyamoto’s translated interview with Famitsu over at Polygon, where he also discusses recent updates to the Wii U’s performance, as well as his design philosophy on the Mario series.
