Metroid Prime 4 Development Scrapped, Reboots with Retro Studios

Metroid Prime 4 was announced back in 2017 at E3 for the Nintendo Switch.  Yet, other than seeing a basic logo, we’ve not seen anything of the game at all.  I think it’s fair to say that most fans weren’t too concerned about this, after all, it’s in the hands of Nintendo and they will no doubt do a great job, and they will show it off when it’s good and ready.

However, over the weekend, Nintendo’s Senior Managing Executive Officer, Shinya Takahashi took to YouTube to provide us all with an update on the development of Metroid Prime 4.  Depending on your perspective, this news was either good or bad, perhaps even a bit of both.

Takahashi said:

The current development progress [of Metroid Prime 4] has not reached the standards we seek in a sequel to Metroid Prime series,” he went on to say “Nintendo always strives for the highest quality in our games and in our development phase, we challenge ourselves and confront whether the game is living up to that quality on a daily basis.  From this perspective, we have determined that the current development status of is very challenged, and we had to make a difficult decision as a development team. We have decided to re-examine the development structure and change it.

 

Of course, alarm bells will ring somewhat for fans, however, Takahashi then went on to announce that with the development of Metroid Prime 4 being rebooted from scratch, the game would be handed over to Retro Studios, who are the team that worked on the three previous Metroid Prime entries.  This in my opinion is fantastic news and it says a lot about Nintendo’s standards that they would scrap a game at this late stage to start all over again, to ensure that they deliver another great Nintendo Switch exclusive.

Sure this will put back any potential release date by some margin, but it will no doubt result in the Metroid Prime game that we all deserve on the Nintendo Switch, and I can’t wait for that release to arrive.  But what do you make of this situation?  Be sure to let us know across our social media channels.