New instalments in beloved franchises for Nintendo's new console...

Nintendo creative director Shigeru Miyamoto has announced in a recent interview that Pikmin 3 and Super Mario Bros. will be coming to the new Wii-U console.

After Miyamoto's interview with Spanish newspaper El Mundo, a Nintendo spokesperson stated “Mr. Miyamoto confirmed that a new Pikmin game will be shown at the E3 expo in June. He believes that anyone who has played Pikmin games in the past will enjoy playing.” More details will be revealed at E3 this coming June, where Nintendo plans to showcase its next generation hardware.

This news comes as a great boost to Nintendo's launch line-up for the Wii-U which already includes best-selling Nintendo franchises The Legend of Zelda and Super Smash Bros., as well as third-party titles such as Batman: Arkham City, Darksiders 2 and Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Fans of the Pikmin franchise have been waiting eagerly for a new addition since 2004, when Pikmin 2 was released on Nintendo Gamecube. Critics and fans alike widely praised Nintendo's efforts, which have seen the game placed in Official Nintendo Magazine's "Top 100 Nintendo Game of All Time" and both games in the series ported to Wii. The Super Mario franchise has seen at least one addition per year since the nineties, but the Wii-U launch title will be the first traditional side-scrolling Mario game since New Super Mario Bros. Wii in 2009.

Nintendo have been flaunting the Wii-U's flexibility since E3 2011, but the latest announcements demonstrate the degree in which the console's developers have been pushing the envelope. The Wii-U will support a minimalistic controller similar to its predecessor, which forces the question of how complex games like Assassin's Creed III will play. What's more, the Wii-U comes with a tablet-like controller complete with touch-screen as standard, and it'll be interesting to see how far the support for this hardware will extend – it remains to be seen whether third-party, multi-platform titles will be able to incorporate this technology effectively, or whether it will be a feature mostly reserved for Nintendo's own home-grown games.

The Wii-U is scheduled for launch in Q4 2012, which could see a Japanese release as early as October and an international release early next year. There are still many questions that fans have over the console's capabilities and features, but we'll have much more news in June. Needless to say, we're excited, and we're sure Miyamoto is too.

See also:

Wii-U release set for November; PS4 to arrive before next Xbox

New Dark Souls game details

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