Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto wonders why the Pikmin series hasn't sold more and why people think it's so difficult.
Seems like time and time again, Nintendo is always trying to sell games to an audience of people who do not wish to play video games. For a sequel, I figured Nintendo should focus on their core audience of Pikmin fans but it seems like they're always changing things to appeal to people who don't play games while in return alienating the people who want more sophisticated gameplay and challenges.
I think the tutorial for Pikmin 4 is boring and painful for people who already know the deal. And I think the constant, slow interruptions absolutely kill the pacing, at least at the beginning.
I'm there for the gameplay loop, not to read the same recycled trash dialogue that every Pikmin game has, and it's ridiculously similar to other basic games, too.
The devs seem to think I'd rather watch the UI do pretty things than play the game, and they couldn't be more wrong. Maybe that crap snappy, let me skim through dialogue at rocket speed, and let's get on with the fun.
The amount of text bubbles in Pikmin 2 seemed reasonable, and could be accelerated by clicking a button. I think the over-tutorializing only started in Pikmin 3, when Nintendo started outsourcing development to Eighting.
It's been a while so I might be misremembering this, but I think a similar thing happened to the Luigi's Mansion series with LM2 when they started outsourcing to Next Level Games.