In the gaming space, there will always be games that take a seemingly unnecessary amount of time to make. Gamers don’t like it because it means they’ll be “strung along” for many years until the title finally releases. Sometimes, the wait can be worth it, as Rockstar Games can attest to with some of its long-developed titles of recent years. However, on the other hand, there are horror stories of games that were announced early, didn’t come out until years later, and weren’t that good. For Metroid Prime 4 it’s officially crossed another milestone since its infamous announcement during an E3 press conference.
That “milestone” is that it was announced during the Nintendo Switch’s first E3 presentation, which was back in 2017! On June 13th, 2017, the first teaser for the game was dropped. It wasn’t much, just some SFX that eventually revealed the Metroid Prime 4 logo. Even with that very small tease, fans were excited. Remember, at the time, Samus Aran hadn’t had a new game in many years, and a certain spinoff on 3DS is considered one of the worst video games of all time for multiple reasons.
So, to hear that a new entry in the “origin saga” of Samus was very appealing. However, that’s when things started to go wrong. Time soon passed, and while fans were fine with waiting, it soon became clear that Nintendo wasn’t updating the title in any meaningful way. Then, the shocking news dropped that the project was being rebooted internally, with Retro Studios returning to the fold to make the title what it should be. While that was fine in theory, it was also announced in January 2019! So it’s been over five years since Retro dived back into the series, and yet we haven’t had a single update for it since.
While many want to write it off, and even former Nintendo leader Reggie Fils-Aime admits that the reveal announcement was a mistake, many still hope it could be released on the Nintendo Switch. In fact, with all the rumors about the upcoming Nintendo Direct, some speculate that this could be the time for The Big N to not just show it off but make it the last “killer app” for the console before its successor comes around.
That would be a poetic way to send it off, that’s for sure. However, only Nintendo knows the state of the game and when it will be revealed.
