At Nintendo’s E3 Direct presentation, the company revealed that Platinum Games are handling the upcoming Star Fox title for Wii U. It seems, however, that this was not always the case.
In an interview with IGN, Star Fox Zero producer Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that Nintendo considered giving the project to Xenoblade Chronicles studio Monolith Soft. He stated: “We didn’t really look around at that many different places. Our first instinct was to try and find an appropriate team within Nintendo. One place we kind of considered was Monolith Soft.”
He continues: “But it kind of came down to there wasn’t really a place we wanted to work with other than Platinum just because they are so committed to creating exciting visuals. We kind of really wanted to improve the visual quality of the game.”
Nintendo felt comfortable with Platinum Games handling Star Fox Zero largely due to the studio’s understanding of action games, as well as the fact that is comprised of Nintendo fans.
One of the reasons Nintendo approached Platinum Games for Star Fox Zero has to do with Miyamoto’s history with game designer Hideki Kamiya. “A kind of an another element is the fact that I worked for a long time with Kamiya, even going back to our Capcom days working on Mickey Mouse games. So that was definitely part of it, too.”
Star Fox Zero will release on the Wii U later this year. Stay tuned to Gamespresso for all of our E3 coverage.