Nintendo has just issued a video statement informing viewers that Metroid Prime 4 development to this point has been scrapped due to the company not being happy with the current state of the game. The company has announced that they are going back to the drawing board, partnering with Retro Studios who helped develop the original series.
Metroid Prime 4 Massively Delayed
It seems that fans who were excited on the prospect of seeing Metroid Prime 4 in 2019 will have to wait even longer. Shinya Takahashi, a lead developer at Nintendo took to the company’s YouTube channel to issue a statement telling about the state of development for the game since the announcement.
Shinya states that they felt the current progress on Metroid Prime 4 would not meet the expectation of the series and the fans, so they have decided to start the game’s development from scratch collaborating with a new director and Retro Studios. Kensuke Tanabe, The producer of the game will now work with Retro Studios in the US to develop the game from scratch.
Metroid Prime 4 was first announced at E3 2017 and to say that Nintendo fans were ecstatic at the reveal would be an understatement. Considering a quality Metroid Prime game had long been missing from the series. Metroid Prime 4 managed to completely evade the press for almost 2 years, skipping news or updates on the project for the remainder of 2017 and 2018 with insiders giving mixed input about the game’s development.
While this does mean that we can definitely lose expectations for a 2019 release date, it might be more realistic to put our hopes for an end of 2020 or early-mid 2021 release date instead.
How you choose to accept this news is up to you, but honestly it is good on Nintendo to cancel a project which didn’t live up to their expectations. After massively successful games like Super Mario Odyssey, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WIld, and other Nintendo Switch best sellers, we can rely on Nintendo knowing when a game will fly off the shelves or just be lost in the pile of Switch games.
What are your thoughts on the update development for Metroid Prime 4? Let us know in the comments section below!