Topic: Metroid Prime 4 Development Rebooted: Now Retro Studios Project

[Khushrenada]

there will probably be some snarky takes about how Other M was released if Nintendo has such high standards for the franchise,

does that mean...it was actually worse than Other M?  Is that even possible? 

Why, oh, why must I be cursed with this gift of seeing the future? Oh, what cruel fate has made me  so intuitive to be able to understand human nature so well and foresee what the outcome of situations will be before they occur? This burden I bear is immense. As another wise forum user once remarked:

You are so perceptive Khushrenada.

[pokepal148]

Federation Force 2 confirmed?

[Luigi Dude]

Yeah considering that Retro hasn't been able to come out with anything for 6 years now this is hardly what I'd call an improvement.

Retro is a first party studio so there will be better over-site and supervision compared to Namco.  Even if the current Retro lacks the talent of the old, at least it's much easier for Nintendo to improve one of there own studio's then making a third party improve theirs.

[nickmitch]

Critically Metroid is one of the most respected franchises in gaming and it's annoying that Nintendo doesn't treat it with the same respect it does for Zelda, which has a comparable critical reputation but is also a big commercial hit with mainstream recognition.

Couldn't you argue though that outright cancelling this project ~2 years in, scrapping everything, and putting one of their most respected studios on it is a real sign of Nintendo treating the series with respect?

What they're doing now is respectful but the situation in the first place isn't.  Nintendo would never out source a mainline Mario, Zelda or Pokémon game to some Namco b-team.  That's the sort of thing they do for franchises that aren't enough of a priority for them to assign their internal teams to.  In general Nintendo seems to regard Metroid as that weird series that the American market appears to like but the Japanese one doesn't.

It's basically the same thing they've done with a lot of the Smash Bros. games, so I wouldn't assume that it was a case of them not regarding the series as important.

I always thought Smash was made with a speficially carved out NamBam team.  Plus, the rumors around MP4 say that the decentralized approach Nintendo took was pretty experimental.  I don't think that would be something they'd do with Mario or Zelda.

[stevey]

It's nice that they told us this is happening but I would've loved to have seen some raw camera footage of the dropped game with some discussion of what caused them to drop it.

Of course the good thing about all this is I imagine the rumored Prime Trilogy HD is guaranteed to come out now.  If a game like this is at least 2-3 years away, they'll want something to hold the Metroid Prime fans over and an HD remaster of that Trilogy would certainly make the wait easier.

From the rumors going around, Metroid Prime Trilogy HD is 100% finished and was supposed to be announced at the last game awards to be released this February to build up hype for MP4. Now that MP4 won't be shown until E3 2021, the release could be delayed all the way to 2020 or beyond if they still want to use it as marketing for MP4. I see no other reason why they would be delaying the release/announcement otherwise

[Mythtendo]

Now that MP4 won't be shown until E3 2021, the release could be delayed all the way to 2020 or beyond if they still want to use it as marketing for MP4. I see no other reason why they would be delaying the release/announcement otherwise

There has been no mention or hint of them showing the game at E3 2021 (or any other date).

[ThePerm]

As far as developing assets go. I don't see the point of starting over completely from scratch. There should be a giant asset base to use from the previous developments. The only thing Retro really should be doing is writing code, and creating new animations at this point.

Whenever I get a new computer I'll restart development of the game I was working on. I pretty much cloned the gameplay of Metroid prime, but I want the environments to be procedural generated like Minecraft. That's one thing I liked about 2d metroid was the greater ability to bomb rocks and find secrets. One thing I like about procedural generation is every-time you play the game it is different. You never know what world you're exploring. Animal crossing had an interesting procedural generation as well. I imagine you could program a game that has dungeons and items to get, but they're not always in the same location.

[Luigi Dude]

As far as developing assets go. I don't see the point of starting over completely from scratch. There should be a giant asset base to use from the previous developments. The only thing Retro really should be doing is writing code, and creating new animations at this point.

From the sounds of things, the original version was a complete dumpster fire.  According to the reports, Namco actually moved the development during the Summer from their Singapore studio into one of their Japanese studio's in hopes of still salvaging the project.  For Nintendo to cancel it less then 6 months after Namco themselves tried to save it shows they had no faith in previous project even being salvageable.

For all we know the original could have been Sonic 2006 levels of trash that wasn't even coded properly.  In situations like this it's much easier to just start over from scratch then trying to go through the mess Namco left behind.

[motang]

I was thrilled when I heard Retro Studios was back to making this. Should have been the case from day one.

[Order.RSS]

What they're doing now is respectful but the situation in the first place isn't.  Nintendo would never out source a mainline Mario, Zelda or Pokémon game to some Namco b-team.  That's the sort of thing they do for franchises that aren't enough of a priority for them to assign their internal teams to.  In general Nintendo seems to regard Metroid as that weird series that the American market appears to like but the Japanese one doesn't.

Hmmm I guess they're kind of right though? Metroid just isn't a sales cannon usually, and the dedicated fanbase it does have has a very narrow idea of what it wants and is swift to reject most attempts at diversification (Federation Force, Other M).

I don't know if I agree that outsourcing inherently signals disdain for a franchise though...
-Flagship/Capcom did 4 Zelda games, 3 of which were the respective, well, flagship Zelda titles for their respective platforms.
-Star Fox Zero & Guard were outsourced to PlatinumGames and Nintendo saw fit to send over Mr. Miyamoto himself to guide development.
-Same story with Metroid: Samus Returns; Sakamoto was the producer after being impressed by MercurySteam's earlier pitch for a Fusion remake.
-Amusement Vision/Sega did F-Zero so well Nintendo reportedly asked to see the source code.
-Lots of remakes (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Luigi's Mansion, WarioWare Gold) have been outsourced so Nintendo can continue to develop new games internally, I doubt those games' respective reputations were just thrown under the bus to make a quick nostalgia buck, they're mostly polished remasters.
-Smash Bros. has been noted above already.

Basically, for a publisher with such narrow development bandwidth as Nintendo, they're bound to turn to outsourcing if they really want to produce 12 games a year. They've done so for remakes (Zelda), but also for franchise revivals (Metroid 2), and marquee titles (Pokkén Tournament, Smash, Warriors games).

As a Metroid fan, I absolutely understand the wish for Nintendo to treat the series as a third pillar behind Mario and Zelda. But the reality is that Mario Kart, Smash, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Pokémon, Kirby, the recent solo Yoshi games, Donkey Kong, and arguably even Fire Emblem nowadays are all more popular franchises. Most of them sell better than Metroid too, Splatoon and Fire Emblem are still behind in unit sales but have seen significant popularity boosts recently - and Splatoon already sits at 12.4 million sold copies against Metroid's 17.4m, with just 2 games under its belt.

I guess I see the initial plan for Metroid Prime 4 not as disrespectfully handing it to "Namco's B-team", but rather Nintendo trying a new production model and it didn't pan out the way they liked. I'd highly doubt that Namco wouldn't put some talented developers on the project; Prime 4 would be their most high-profile work with Nintendo since the GameCube days (Star Fox Assault, Donkey Konga 1-3, Mario Baseball), I'd be surprised if they didn't jump at that opportunity.