Marketing and Organic Gameplay
The Pikmin series has always offered a microscopic view of our familiar world, exploring nature and collecting amazing treasures with the help of tiny creatures. However, players who remember Pikmin 2 for the GameCube will surely recall a unique detail: among the discovered treasures were quite a few real-world items from well-known brands—from Duracell batteries to 7-Up bottle caps and jars of Skippy peanut butter.
In an interview with GamesBeat, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé finally explained why the company took such a step.
Boosting Franchise Awareness
According to Reggie, Pikmin was one of Nintendo's smaller and lesser-known franchises at the time, so the company was looking for fresh ways to draw audience attention to it:
- Organic integration: real-world items fit the concept of exploring the planet from the perspective of tiny captains perfectly.
- Joint promotion: collaborations with famous brands enabled cross-marketing and broadened the circle of potential players.
Thus, the appearance of real brands was not merely a commercial deal, but a well-thought-out strategy to popularize the series, which is now firmly established on the Nintendo Switch platform.
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