I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not talking about gimmicks in general. I was being literal. Zero was literally "Star Fox: Adventure'd." The IP was added to an unrelated demo that was made to validate the gamepad. This is something that he has been very explicit and open about:

"We started work on all of them [SFZ, Giant Robot, and Guard] at about the same time. For Project Giant Robot we started earlier, then left it and came back to it, but all of them went into development at around the same time. Typically when we’re developing, we have a lot of different experiments that we’re working on. So these started off as experiments, but they all went into full development around the same time.

Whenever we create new hardware we do some experiments with it, but on Wii we didn’t release any Star Fox games, so we took some of the experimentation that we’d done and the assets that we’d used then and used them for the experimentation we were doing with the Wii U." - Miyamoto, TIME Magazine

He appropriated SF onto these experiments because there hadn't been a new one in a while. That's why the turn out was so quick, why it's redoing the same story and areas for the third time, and why they didn't have a dev until after it was announced. And why it was revealed with the other two. I wouldn't be surprised if were called "Project Gyro Aim"  or something before the Star Fox IP was left onto it. It may as well be Link's Crossbow Training.

Here's my theory on the OT: He's not talking about games.

I think games are related but I agree that there could be more that he wants to do with these series. He has started with the Pikmin shorts and the Star Fox anime short but maybe we'll see more down the pipeline since Nintendo has started its initiative to utilize their IPs in other medium.

There's a lot of reason to believe that he's specifically talking about video content. The most obvious is that the question he is responding to is about characters, not games. He said Fox McLoud, not Star Fox. It's likely the same with Pikmin. He's literally talking about the Pikmin themselves, which are basically Nintendo's "Minions."

I think he's talking about movies and not games. Like, I'm sure there will be games, but I think when it comes to making the characters more resonant and mainstream, it's movies. Which is obviously exciting. I wouldn't be surprised if Star Fox and Pikmin where the first two films.

I just hope to God that it's not anime. Anime is NOT mainstream, and will NOT resonate in the west. It should be CGI like with Pixar films, and this is coming from a hand animation/anime connoisseur. I also hope that the Nintendo films all end up sharing a universe with a consistant art style and I hope that that universe is independant from the games, even if they take story ideas from them. They should have their own movies and then come together for an Avengers-like Super Smash Bros. movie. I also hope that there are no specific Mario movies. He's big enough that he doesn't need it, and it would make more sense for Super Smash Bros. to be the ones where he's the star.

They can make:

1. Star Fox

2. Pikmin

3. The Legend of Zelda (Give Link the personality of Yasuri Shichika from Katanagatari plz)

4. Star Fox 2

5. Luigi's Mansion

And then "Super Smash Bros.: The Movie" with Mario as the leader. Then they can continue one with sequels afterwards until the next one.

1. The Legend of Zelda 2

2. Metroid

3. Star Fox 3

4. Pikmin 2

5. Metroid 2

And then Super Smash Bros. 2, and so on. All in the "Smash Bros" CGI character trailer art style.

Yeah, it's a catch 22 situation, honestly. Star Fox needs ambition, high production, and a new team working on it. They can't keep using it as experimentation fodder. It's not fair, and bad for the franchise's perception.

You are right, but you got me a little wrong. I was just pointing out that the whole of Wii U is made around a gimmick the same way Star Fox Z is. Basically they've done everything like described above. You need to understand the process how Nintendo have traditionally operated; being a software and hardware company, their software have often took advantage of what the hardware could do, or the other way around. It's easy to understand what I'm talking about when we look at the Nintendo's controller innovations. 

The G&W D-pad not only made the games possible where you needed to move quickly in different directions while performing actions, whereas without the type of games you did not need the D-pad.

15 years later analog stick made Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time possible, but if the games weren't there, there had been no analog stick.

Decade later the DS with it's touch screen made Brain Training possible, even if DS wasn't made with Brain Training in mind.

Wii had Wii Remote and Wii Sports making each other possible. It was followed by Wii Fit and Balance Board. This was followed by WSR and Wii Motion Plus.

Then we had Wii U and Gamepad and games that needed it's innovation... None. There's even no controller innovation, the only innovation there is, is the off-TV play. Nintendo's games on Wii U just seem to focus on "trying to make use for the Wii U gamepad", so the games are full of controller gimmicks that were seen in some tech demo (if at all).

I won't call all of them controller gimmicks. WWHD, TMS, and XCX all used the gamepad well. It just wasn't flashy. I get your point, though.

@Spemanig: Isn't one one the games an Atlus game, one is a port from Gamecube and only one is Nintendo's own original Wii U game? Haven't played any of the games on Wii U, but if you can play the games with the Wii U Classic Controller without Wii U gamepad, I guess the game may not be so gimmicky.

The only one you can't play with a pro controller is TMS (I think). Deus Ex was the same way. There were a lot of games that used the gamepad really well. They just didn't shout it from the rooftops. The best uses of the gamepad were those that were complementary and "invisible."

I agree completely with the last sentence. That's how it should be, or better yet, let the choose how he/she want's to play the game.

Just keep Fox in melee, I'd love to see more of pink in though, pikmin 3 is definitely one of my favorite wii u games