Pikmin fans know a thing or two about waiting. The span between Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 was almost intolerable. The acclaimed third entry was first rumored to be in development for the Game Cube, and later for the Wii. It wasn’t until 2013, nine years after the release of Pikmin 2 , that we finally got our hands on Pikmin 3 on the Wii U, and the wait was totally worth it. Pikmin , like Splatoon , represents one of the most successful, (relatively) newer IPs from Nintendo. That’s why we all went a little crazy last September when Shigeru Miyamoto mentioned, almost in passing, that Pikmin 4 was getting “very close” to completion.
Since then we’ve been waiting with bated breath for any kind of follow-up announcement. Surely, we thought, a Nintendo Direct announcing the imminent release of Pikmin 4 was on the way. That announcement never came, and Nintendo didn’t have anything to show of Pikmin 4 at E3. Has it fallen by the wayside? It has not, but it did slip a bit lower on Nintendo’s priority list for a bit, according to a Game Rant interview with Miyamoto. “Yes, you are right, and we’re working on Pikemin 4 ,” he said. “So, you know, when we’re in development we have to create a list of priorities and it has been hard to kind of fit that into that list, but we’re hopefully starting to see that on the list now.” Sounds to me like we could be looking at another Wii U / NX dual release, or maybe even an NX exclusive at this point, but we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully we’ll see Pikmin 4 some time before 2022.