When Mario fans heard that a 3D Mario platformer for Wii U would be shown at E3, expectations were undoubtedly high and varied. Many had their own ideas about what Mario's 3D foray into high-definition would look and play like, but it would have been difficult to predict a successor to Super Mario 3D Land. Fan reactions to the announcement were certainly mixed, with some questioning the decision to focus on multiplayer.

However, speaking to Game Informer, Super Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that the focus on multiplayer in Super Mario 3D World has been included to strike a balance between the openness of games like Super Mario Galaxy and the sidescrolling action of the New Super Mario Bros. games in order to reach a wider audience. Despite this, Miyamoto wouldn't rule out the possibility of Mario returning to more single-player focused adventures.

But we still have, obviously, the Galaxy series, and there's a possibility that in the future we may look to explore what else we can do with the Galaxy series. For us, it was really about trying to find the right 3D Mario space in which we're going to allow the widest audience to play.

Even noting the Mario franchise's history with multiplayer, Miyamoto acknowledged the wealth of ideas that the teams at Nintendo have for the plumber's more solitary outings.

Before there was the Super Mario Bros. series, there was just the Mario Bros. game, and that was a 2-player multiplayer game. So, even from those very early days, we always wanted to include some type of multiplayer. When the New Super Mario Bros. team on Wii was able to do that and include the four-player multiplayer in the side-scrolling fashion, we very quickly found that our team really liked that, and they immediately said, 'Well, we want to do the same thing in a 3D Mario space.' They've had a lot of fun exploring that. But definitely with the single-player Mario experience, there's still a lot of possibilities that we can explore, so I think we'll probably go back to that again at some point.

If a new 3D Super Mario game were to come to light, it sounds like it could either be a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy 2 or a new series altogether.

What do you think of the direction Nintendo is taking with Super Mario 3D World? Share your opinion in the comment section below.