No online multiplayer in Pikmin 3

Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that Pikmin 3 will not take advantage of the Wii U's increased focus on online connectivity - although it will have local co-op play.

Speaking to IGN, Miyamoto said Nintendo learned a lesson while developing recent Mario Kart games, which seems to have made it a little shy of online multiplayer.

"You have to be very careful that you don't drop frames as you're trying to sync up with other players over what could be a very great physical distance, over the internet," he said.

"But in the situation of Pikmin, for example, since you would have lots of individual, small creatures, the Pikmin, whose every movement and location is going to be really important in the game, it would be very difficult to sync up over an internet connection.

"So I think what we've decided to do is focus on the single-player and local multiplayer aspects, which are really fun. But unfortunately, no online multiplayer for Pikmin 3. But the co-op local multiplayer is really fun."

In the same interview, Miyamoto revealed Nintendo had prototyped other Pikmin games before settling on a Wii U sequel.

"We had a bit of a discussion internally about which direction we should go for Pikmin 3. And at the same time we were also trying out different experiments on the DS and the 3DS and the Wii to see which platform the game would work best on," he said.

"We had decided on Wii when the possibility of putting it on the Wii U became available, as we began to see what that framework was going to look like. At that time we definitely decided, okay, this is going to be much better on Wii U. Nothing huge changed in terms of the fundamental concept."

The eagerly-awaited Pikmin 3 was revealed during Nintendo's E3 press conference, and was the highlight of the presentation for many. It's expected on Wii U during the hardware's launch period.