We have bad news for people who are impatiently waiting for Metroid Prime 4 – development of the highly anticipated Nintendo exclusive has been completely rebooted.
The heartbreaking news came in the form of a developer update on the game from Nintendo executive Shinya Takahashi, in which he said that “the current development process has not reached the standards we seek in a sequel to the Metroid Prime series” before adding that “Nintendo always strives for the highest quality in our games; and in the development phase, we challenge ourselves and confront whether the game is living up to that quality on a daily basis. If we’re not satisfied with the quality, we aren’t able to deliver it to our customers with confidence.”
Taking the corporate shpiel away, that basically means that Metroid Prime 4 simply isn’t shaping up well enough for Nintendo’s liking. Of course, Metroid Prime 4 was being developed by a different studio than those who developed the first three games in the series. That new studio was never officially announced, but it was strongly rumoured that it was Bandai Namco, so this news is a bit of a kick in the balls for them and it will slightly damage their reputation.
Continuing with his statement, Takahashi said “We have determined that the current development status of the game is very challenged, and we had a difficult decision as a development team. We have decided to re-examine the development structure itself and change it. Specifically, we decided to have the Producer, Kensuke Tanabe, work in trust and collaboration with the studio that developed the original Metroid Prime series, Retro Studios, and restart development from the beginning.”
So basically, Bandai Namco weren’t delivering, so Nintendo has decided to bring the developers of the original trilogy back in to sort things out. They always come crawling back, don’t they?
Of course, this news can be taken in two ways. On the one hand, we all want Metroid Prime 4 to live up to our expectations, but on the other hand this is going to put a massive delay on the games release. Talking about this, Takahashi said “Completion of the game will be delayed from our initial internal plan. We strongly recognise that this delay will come as a disappointment to the many fans who have been looking forward to the launch of Metroid Prime 4. It will be a long road until the next time we will be able to update you on the development progress, and development time will be extensive.”
We’ve been waiting a long time for more details on Metroid Prime 4, which was announced way back at E3 2017, and now we’re going to be waiting much longer. It’s very hard to say how long it could be until Metroid Prime 4 finally sees the light of day, but it’s going to be a few years at least, which definitely shuts down our hopes of seeing Metroid Prime 4 in 2019. It is, however, good to see Nintendo prioritizing the quality of the game over everything else, so let’s just hope that this incredibly long wait is worth it.
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