While we haven’t heard anything about Metroid Prime 4 since the game’s reveal at E3 2017, fans were hopeful that the game’s development was on the track. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed this morning as Nitnendo’s Shinya Takahashi has confirmed that the consolemaker is restarting development on Metroid Prime 4 with the help of Retro Studios.
According to Takahashi, Nintendo was unhappy with the current state of the game and didn’t believe that Metroid Prime fans would be happy with it:
We must let you know that the current development progress has not reached the standards we seek in a sequel to the Metroid Prime series.
If we’re not satisfied with the quality, we aren’t able to deliver it to our customers with confidence, and the game will not live up to our fans’ expectations. From this perspective, we have determined that the current development status of the game is very challenged, and we had to make a difficult decision as a development team. We have decided to reexamine the development structure itself and change it.
To remedy this problem, Nintendo has decided to scrap everything and “restart development from the beginning.” Moving forward, Producer Kensuke Tanabe will collaborate closely with Retro Studios, the original creators of the Metroid Prime sub-series. This bump in the road means that Metroid Prime 4 has been indefinitely delayed, and Takahashi said that it will be “a long road” until Nintendo can update us on the game’s development progress.
You can view Nintendo’s full statement in the video embedded above.
