It’s been a very interesting day, but ultimately, it’s been a day that would only prove to take some even more interesting twists and turns in the late of the night. I can only imagine the sheer excitement of thousands when that same notification appeared in their inbox, “Nintendo Uploaded: Development Update on Metroid Prime 4 for Nintendo Switch”. Even I dropped everything I was doing to check out just what was going on — were we finally about to see some in-game footage for the latest entry into the Metroid Prime series?
I’m sure those of you have already seen the video know this, but it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting. From the moment I opened the video, noticing the comment section was disabled, I knew something was off — “Oh, are they just preventing people from spoiling the three-minute video in the comments?”, was probably what crossed my mind at the time. But as it turns out, Nintendo simply wasn’t ready to show anything, and likely won’t be for a very, very long time.
In the video shared on their official YouTube channel, Nintendo’s Senior Managing Executive Officer, Shinya Takahashi, finds himself center-frame on what has honestly become the Nintendo-staple camera shot. But instead of giving us that warm Treehouse-esque feeling, we’re instead met with some very disappointing news — something that appears to be echoed within Nintendo aswell; development on Metroid Prime 4 has failed to meet the standards set by Nintendo, and as such, the project as is has been scrapped and is set to be started from scratch.
While this will come as shocking news to many, and definitely not the sort of news fans of the Metroid Prime series have been wanting to hear, there is a reason to be excited. Alongside the announcement of Nintendo starting the project from scratch, it was shared that producer Kensuke Tanabe will now be working alongside Retro Studios, the original studio behind the development of the previous Metroid Prime titles.
So while this does mean that we’re unlikely to be seeing Metroid Prime 4 anytime soon, even though it was originally announced at E3 2017, this does go to show that Nintendo is taking the development of the next major entry into the Prime series seriously. It’d be interesting to know just what direction Kensuke Tanabe was taking the game, however, and how it will vary from what we’ll eventually end up seeing with Retro Studios involved.
While we’re not sure when the next time we’ll be able to update you on Metroid Prime 4 is, it’ll be interesting to see how Nintendo proceeds from here.