We review all the official information we have known about the long-awaited Retro Studios video game during 2019. On the way to Nintendo Switch.
Metroid Prime 4. A name that will sell consoles, Nintendo knows. Many users also know, which will be done with Nintendo Switch whenever Samus Aran continues the famous trilogy of Retro Studios on a platform that approaches the equator of his life in the market. Time is pressing, they say, but a year has passed since the title produced by Kensuke Tanabe made it public that it was restarting, from scratch; twelve months marked by a constant and resounding silence.
On January 25, 2019, the community learned a story that is never a good sign of anything. That a game is restarted means that things are not going in the desired direction; but Nintendo is also aware that it is better to make drastic decisions in time than to regret an irreversible stumble.
Retro Studios is the name chosen by Nintendo for a development that did not start the team based in Austin, Texas, but another study that, according to sources consulted, was an external Bandai Namco team located in Singapore with several parts of the project outsourced. Communication problems, lack of affinity between departments … Aspects that hindered the correct workflow. This is not an article focused on the first two years of information about Metroid Prime (2017 and 2018), since the chronicle of this tangled development was already studied in this article; Today we will review what came after Tanabe's words, the absence of the game at E3 and the multiple hiring of Retro Studios.
Silence, yes, but I work over low heat. Metroid Prime 4 does not play in a hurry.
January 25, 2019: don't expect Metroid Prime 4 for 2019, nor …
It all started with Shinya Takahasi starring in a video with sincerity, giving the face, where things were said without euphemisms: the product that was brewing did not reach the desired quality levels and, therefore, had to start over. There are many games (more than we think) that are canceled before living a second chance. This case was of the seconds; and Nintendo preferred to reallocate the assignment to the authors of the original GameCube and Wii trilogy.
We also wonder what Retro Studios has been doing for so long, from Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Wii U, 2014; Switch, 2018) until now. All that can be said is mere speculation until Nintendo or the company founded by Jeff Spangenberg says otherwise. You can work on something that did not come to fruition; Maybe they worked on an already finished videogame safely stored … Who knows. What is certain is that Retro Studios is hiring new assets, a template that will leave behind the 129 employees that appeared on the company's official website in 2018 on LinkedIn to show, today, at least 133 employees with a profile in this respected social network.
Exterior of Retro Studios offices in Austin, Texas
Takahasi described the decision taken as very complex that January 2019, but if there was someone who could justify that Metroid Prime 4 should not be canceled but restarted, it was precisely Kensuke Tanake, also a producer of Luigi's Mansion 3 and an expert in these leaders . The comment, not very promising for the less patient, because it was going to have to wait "long enough" for the game "to live up to the rest of the titles of the Metroid Prime series".
April 2019: a dozen jobs available on the official website
While the community of the fledgling Nintendo Switch grew, Retro Studios began to work on a development that, in reality, was granted months before the news was made public. The information to which FreeGameTips has had access places the cancellation of that first Metroid Prime 4 past the equator of the year 2018.
It was in April 2019 when what remains a public portal began to play. The website dedicated to potential job vacancies in Nintendo companies submitted a dozen positions to join the ranks of Retro in Austin. We talk about positions to work as cartoonists, illustrators, art directors and developers. The portal, at the time of publishing this article, has eleven vacancies available to which it is possible to apply.
Metroid Prime (2003, GameCube) | Nintendo
An E3 focused on Mario's brother, Tanabe explained
The good weather arrived and the E3 2019 arrived. Nintendo did not miss an appointment where he plays his cards in a particular way. For the past five years, the firm directed by Shuntaro Furukawa does not opt for a public press conference but rather for a Nintendo Direct, a long-term video previously recorded in which announcements, dates and other important information are exhibited. There was no trace of Metroid Prime 4, although it was one of the great wishes of the fans after that first teaser revealed at E3 2017, where this whole story really began.
Kensuke Tanabe and Yoshihito Ikebata, top leaders of Luigi’s Mansion 3, talked to Eurogamer long and hard about the outstanding third episode of the saga; but they also did it from the game that everyone expected news from. The answer was clear and, again, sincere: “To be completely honest, in this E3 I just wanted people to pay attention to Luigi. If I mentioned something about Metroid Prime 4, people would have focused only on that, ”he replied, knowing the power of that name.
Meanwhile, the Retro Studios website continued as then and sought a very specific alignment of professionals: art director, product tester, outsourced art administrator, IT engineer level 3, gameplay engineer level 1, creator of outdoor environments principal, principal character artist, principal cinematic artist, principal graphics engineer, level 1 tools engineer, level 3 tools engineer and physics engineer.
Autumn: signings of professionals with experience in the Halo saga
Change of season and small new doses of information. Nintendo's financial reports, impassive every quarter: TBA (To Be Announced) when referring to the target release date for the game.
But it was at the end of October when one of the available vacancies ceased to be; specifically, that of artistic director and illustrator. Kyle Hefley, a renowned character modeler with experience in more than twenty video games, including Halo's character design, was incorporated into Retro Studios, although his profile does not include working on Metroid Prime 4 (this does not have to confirm or deny anything, just working at Retro Studios).
His incorporation to the North American Nintendo team meant his departure from 343 Industries, where he had worked as a senior character modeler in Halo 4, Halo 5 and the still developing Halo: Infinite, whose launch is estimated for 2020 Naviades on Xbox One , Xbox Series X and W10.
2020 arrives: “Date still to be determined”
Nintendo held in Tokyo, Japan, this January 31 its corresponding quarterly meeting with the group of shareholders. Mr. Furukawa made clear the success of a Nintendo Switch that already exceeds – in less than three years – the 52 million units sold worldwide; a higher pace than Wii at that point.
Beyond superlatives and data that reflect the great commercial performance of the machine, which is having an indirect impact on the sales of its exclusive video games, where speed records are concatenated, a document was also published with what they expected for the next fiscal year that It will begin on April 1.
Names like the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Bayonetta 3 and Metroid Prime 4 did not suffer the same fate as others such as Bravely Default II and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, which will be seen safely on the shelves of the stores before the end of the year 2020. Those, however, still do not have an approximate window, which comes to confirm several things.
The first, to say that they cannot get out in 2020 is completely wrong. If they don't have a date yet, Nintendo doesn't want to hurry to give an approximate window; but its development may be much more advanced than we think. Already said the retired president of Nintendo of America, Reggie Fils-Aime, back in 2018, before the restart: "It is normal that we announce something when you are in a state where you can try, have in hand." It has not always been that way. At that time, surely, I did not expect that the development would start from scratch: “For some games that will be in development for a time that we could consider very broad – as is the case with Metroid Prime 4 – and that has great expectations behind, in those cases, we will share it, ”he said about the early announcement of MP4 at E3 2017.“ We will share it very early. In others, however, we want to wait to show some of them. ”
It also happened with Bayonetta 3, which has been announced for several years and we haven't seen any gameplay yet, although it progresses properly.
And this is all we know for now of a title that, when it comes out, will give much to talk about. Meanwhile, the launch of a hypothetical Metroid Prime Trilogy in High Definition on Nintendo Switch sounds logical, but it remains only a wish.
Who knows what will happen tomorrow.
