In Nintendo’s Ask The Developer series, Miyamoto recently took part in a roundtable discussion about Pikmin 4, and the Pikmin series in general. His comments about Pikmin’s overall popularity are interesting:
Miyamoto: There have been three games in the series until now, from Pikmin to Pikmin 3, and personally I’ve always wondered, “Why haven’t they exploded more in sales even though they’re so much fun to play? Why do people think they’re so difficult?”
Many people seem to think the characters are cute, but that the games themselves are a bit difficult. Pikmin die if you make the wrong decision, so there may be some fear of losing them.
Miyamoto: I get that people find it more difficult when death is a factor. But I think the franchise’s strength lies in its relationship with mortality. If something is irreversible, you need to figure out a way to prevent undesired things from happening. To try to prevent Pikmin from dying, you need to practice “Dandori.” To me, that’s what makes this game unique. I think people find Pikmin difficult for two reasons: the controls and the depth of gameplay. I spent a long time mulling over how we could convey these points as “interesting” rather than “difficult.”
Dandori: A Japanese word that means “to think about planning and efficiency in advance to get things done smoothly.”
Kando: Yes, looking at players’ reactions to the first three games, I’ve also thought really hard about how to get more people to play this game. In the early stages of development, we prioritized ease of play and experimented with making the controls easy enough for those who aren’t used to playing games. We also tested improvements to the camera and AI. Also, it just doesn’t feel like a Pikmin game to me if it’s not like the first one. That is, if it doesn’t have this Dandori element where players learn and become more efficient through repetition.
Miyamoto’s comments made me chuckle. Nintendo’s at a point of success with the Switch where they now apparently think that all of their IPs should sell tens of millions of copies. However, if Nintendo would take a peek out of their bubble, they would realize that Pikmin is basically a real-time strategy game, and RTS games don’t sell millions and millions of copies anymore, if they ever did.
It’s great Nintendo wants to make Pikmin more accessible, but no amount of tweaking will change the fact that RTS games tend to be stressful and require repetition to get good at them. I love Pikmin and the RTS genre, but that gameplay isn’t for everyone.
That being said, it’s not that the series has sold poorly. All of the main installments have sold over a million copies – but by the standard of first-party Nintendo games on the Switch, that’s a small number. Who knows, maybe Pikmin 4 will be the game that breaks things open for the series. I hope so.
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