Nintendo apologizes to fans as Metroid Prime 4 restarts development

Bad news for gamers on Nintendo consoles and especially for fans of Metroid. Nintendo shared a development update video for the highly anticipated new entry Metroid Prime 4. Calling it an update is kind of underselling the news however, as Big N announced to scratch all progress made so far and restart the entire development of the game with a new developer at the helm.

It has been a long two years when Nintendo unveiled Metroid Prime 4 to the masses. There wasn’t much to show though with the entire announcement consisting of a mere logo. That was still more than enough for Metroid-starved fans to jump in excitement. That’s pretty understandable as Nintendo has been anything but proficient at utilizing the iconic franchise in the past decade!

Many Metroid fans consider the last true Metroid game 2007’s Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. It’s true that several Metroid games came out afterwards, but they were either remakes of older titles or outsourced games that didn’t resonate well with Nintendo fans.

The first alarm bells started ringing for Metroid fans when news broke out last year that Metroid Prime 4 wasn’t being developed in-house by Nintendo and instead was given to Bandai Namco. Not really a good omen and now all pessimists have been proven right as Nintendo pulled the plug. At least from Bandai Namco. Nintendo Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinya Takahashi explained the difficult decision to restart development with Bandai Namco’s game “not reaching the standards they seek for a Metroid Prime sequel”.

The silver lining with today’s news at least is that Metroid is returning to its roots at Nintendo. None other than Retro Studios, the spiritual successor studio of legendary Rare, is now responsible for Metroid Prime 4. As the original creators of the Metroid Prime trilogy, this can be seen as a good thing but there’s a catch. Retro Studios is starting from scratch and this means that it’ll take several years until Metroid Prime 4 will see the light of day. A somewhat bitter pill for fans who already have waited for two years. But as the saying goes, better delayed than bad.