What else had Retro Studios done to suggest they would be a good team for Metroid Prime?
Just about the post the same thing. Most of the original team was poached from id Software, Epic Games, Iguana Entertainment etc. Granted, many of them had experience making first-person games, but Metroid Prime was always more of an adventure game.
More importantly, Metroid Prime’s development was in trouble until Nintendo stepped in, cancelled the rest of Retro Studios’ projects, and basically held the developers’ hands until release. Every developer has to start somewhere, and many experiement with new things. Retro Studios, for example, went from Metroid to Donkey Kong.
The only other thing we really know about Metroid Prime 4 is that Kensuke Tanabe is once again leading the project. Okay, Federation Force was a weird choice, but Tanabe is still the Prime series’ producer. That said, I’m not really sure how, at this point, there’s any reason for skepticism. Nintendo hasn’t shown anything except a preliminary logo.