Metroid Prime 4 scrapped, development restarted under Retro Studios

Nintendo has broken their silence on the development of Metroid Prime 4 today, and with it comes some good news and some bad news.

In a Development Update video posted to Nintendo’s official YouTube page, Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinya Takahashi announced that the team behind Metroid Prime 4’s development had made the difficult decision to scrap the current build of the game in order to start fresh. It was felt that the game in its former state wasn’t meeting the standards of what a Prime sequel should be, and was thus a game Nintendo could not release to its fans in good faith.

While this delay is sure to disappoint the fans who’ve been waiting for years to see the Prime series continue, there is a silver lining. Taking over development of this new build is none other than Retro Studios, a name that should be familiar to many Metroid Prime fans. Retro Studios are the team behind the original Prime trilogy, and their work led to the three games being highly acclaimed to this day. To see them return to make Prime 4 as great as it should be is an exciting prospect, and will hopefully be worth the extended wait.

Metroid Prime 4 was originally announced at E3 2017 for the Nintendo Switch without a release window. No new release date has been set following the game’s restart, but of course it’s still early days for this build. While fans may be left to question what might have been, in the end it seems Nintendo is confident that they can deliver a product that would have blown the previous build out of the water.

Now all fans can do is wait. Maybe pass the time by trying to 100% Samus Returns? It’s pretty great.