Let’s rewind the clocks to June 2017. The Nintendo Switch had launched very successfully that previous March and fans were now eager to play Nintendo platforms again thanks to titles like Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. E3 2017 was a big year for the company as they dropped announcements and release dates for several titles to help define their year and make it one of the best gaming years that Nintendo fans had ever had. But Nintendo also made one of their most infamous announcements ever when they revealed that Metroid Prime 4 was coming.
Why was this infamous? Simply put, former Nintendo of America head Reggie Fils-Aime said the game wasn’t close to being done, but they wanted gamers to know that they had listened to them and were working on games that they had been asking for from franchises that had been “dormant” for a while. In other words, they teased the far future to help support the present, and as we all know, that backfired.
You see, in the beginning, Metroid Prime 4 wasn’t being worked on by Retro Studios. While we never found out who the original developer was, they didn’t last, as the game eventually went dark until Nintendo revealed that the game was starting over from scratch under the careful guiding hands of Retro Studios.
Since then, we’ve heard nothing about the game outside of job listings from Retro. Listings which continue to grow without any sign of whether it means the game is close to completion or not. On the official Retro Studios job listing page, you’ll find nine job openings across multiple roles. All of them are artist positions but vary from concept artists to technical artists, terrain artists, etc.
Plus, if you click on one of the jobs, you’ll see this line:
“Announced by Nintendo in January 2019, Retro Studios is currently in the midst of developing Metroid Prime 4 for the Nintendo Switch.”
All this shows you that Retro is still working on the game, but we have no idea when it’ll come out or what it will look like.
The only good thing is that this wasn’t the only Samus Aran title announced for Switch. Metroid Dread came out in 2021 and was an incredible title that helped build the franchise’s legacy and even became its best-seller. So if Retro can ever get done with the game, it might be one of the last great titles on the Switch.
