While there was no talk of the Metroid franchise at E3, Stephen Totilo of Kotaku had an interesting interview with Shigeru Miyamoto and Shinya Takahashi of Nintendo. Totilo pointedly asked them what was going on with the Metroid franchise, and what fans could hope to expect. Miyamoto deferred to Takahashi, who currently works with the creators and directors from the Metroid series. Takahashi had this to say:
“So it has been a while since we released the last one and we’re having discussions internally about what we can do next. So at this point we have two different types of Metroid games. We have the Prime style of Metroid game and we have the more traditional style of Metroid game. We feel that we do need to take care of both of these styles of play. And the hope is that at some point in the near future we’ll be able to share something about them.”
This seems to indicate that a new game, or at least a new announcement, might be coming to us soon (perhaps during Tokyo Game Show?).
When asked by Totilo which one they preferred, Takahashi said he liked them both, and Miyamoto said he prefers Prime. I think this entire conversation is adorable.