Miyamoto considering multiplayer for Mario Galaxy

Speaking at an after-hours E3 press briefing this evening, Shigeru Miyamoto told journalists that he's considering adding multiplayer options to Super Mario Galaxy on Wii.

He also said that while he was unprepared to commit to Mario as a launch title, it would "definitely be there within the first six months".

During a general Q&A session using pre-approved questions, which we'll have up a bit later, Miyamoto said he'd wanted, "for many years", to "have one player play as Mario and for other players to join in and play, and help out and that sort of thing".

"And with the way the Wii remote works, given that we can have up to four remotes using the player functionality simultaneously, one thing we're looking at doing for Super Mario Galaxy is allowing for multiplayer that would allow for one player to control Mario with the second, third and fourth players using the Wii remote to help him out, perhaps get in his way - and so we're looking at different ideas with how to work with that," he said.

The Q&A session was tagged on the end of a press presentation of a CG trailer for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which is due out on Wii in 2007, and which Masahiro Sakurai - formerly of HAL Labs - is developing with a Nintendo team set up for that purpose.

More in a bit!