This Summer at E3, it was announced that Pikmin 3 was going to be one of the launch titles for the Wii U. This was an important announcement for the fledgeling system as, aside from the New Super Mario Bros. U, Pikmin 3 is the only full on original Nintendo intellectual property being developed to be available at the launch of the system (not counting the spin-off carnival game Nintendo Land). Recently, though, it was announced during an "Iwata Asks" interview on the Nintendo website that the release window has now been pushed back from this Fall to a very vague Spring 2013.
This might be a precarious situation for the first couple months of the Wii U, as this will leave the new system to rely on one Mario game as their only big "Nintendo" release, several other third party Wii U exclusives, and a bevy of third party multi-platform titles, many of which have already been released for the other systems for quite some time. While it probably won't hurt the initial sales of the system, especially since the shoulders of a Mario title are exceptionally broad and will carry much of the launch, this definitely isn't pleasing news for Nintendo fans in general.
Still Pikmin 3 will most likely be worth the wait, bringing much more hectic puzzle and real time strategy gameplay to the Wii U. In this game, players will be able to control up over 100 Pikmin at a time with at least two new types of Pikmin being introduced in addition to the usual Red, Yellow, and Blue Pikmin. Another new feature will be the player's ability to now control four leaders of Pikmin at once, a definite bump up from the two leaders at a time in Pikmin 2. And, from the looks of it, this entrant in the series is quite easy on the eyes as well, with the high definition graphics and level of detail, even with so much going on at once on the screen, being almost mindblowing at times. In the end, no matter when this game is specifically released, it looks like true Pikmin and Nintendo fans will have something to look forward to come Spring time.
