The consoles also need support from third-party publishers

Nov 30, 2012 12:55 GMT  ·  By

Satoru Iwata, the president of Nintendo, says that his company is working on fully 3D video games in the Mario and the Zelda series that will be launched on the new Wii U home console, but that no official announcements will be made at this time.

Talking to IGN, the executive said, “As we develop a new hardware platform, we ask ourselves such questions as, ‘what kind of new Zelda and Mario games do the software creators hope to make on this? We will announce the launch schedules for new 3D Zelda and Mario games in the future, but this is not the right opportunity for me to indicate when we will make such announcements.”

Mario and The Legend of Zelda are the biggest video game franchises in Nintendo’s stable and the company will surely leverage them in order to push up sales for the Wii U, probably at some point during 2013.

Iwata is a realist and understands that the new gaming platform will require more than the two franchises to succeed in the long term.

Iwata added, “Our first party software alone can’t be enough to appeal to the different tastes of all game fans. The decision of Nintendo that it will publish the two software titles from Platinum Games is one answer to this challenge.”

Nintendo is making a concerted effort to get the likes of Activision, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft to launch their biggest franchises on the Wii U.

The home console is available on the North American market and is launching today in Europe, with Japanese players set to get access to it on December 8.

Take a look at the tech demo for a Zelda Wii U title, which was shown during this year’s E3, even if Nintendo has made it clear that it does not reflect the type of game it will actually create.