That still sounds like an expectations issue and not development issues. It sure did, but again we are not talking about that delay. we are talking about the rumor that said that the games was going to be delayed again due to development troubles. Development troubles and further polish in the graphics are very different things aswell.

Like No man's sky obviously has development troubles because its been delayed for what 2 years now? But Starfox had one delay wich was said to polish the game aka to adress those graphics complaints. Theres no rumors at this point, everything is pretty clear.

Its the rumor that came a couple of weeks ago that said that there were development troubles with the multiplayer and the game was gonna get delayed that have been totally and utterly debunked. I don't think theres any debating that.

No. Star Fox was never slated for September. It was slated for "2015", then "Holiday 2015", then November 20th, 2015. Up to that point, nothing constitutes as a delay.

Then, it was delayed, being slated for "Q1 2016", and after that they finally settled on April 22nd, 2016, which has ever since been the release date and it's now pretty much confirmed to be the definitive one. Going from "Q1" to April without officially stating a delay is what I would call a "soft delay", but regardless, it wasn't a big thing, since there was never a confirmed date within Q1 and April is still pretty close.

curl-6 said:

 I actually meant the original Metroid Prime on Gamecube.

It has an incredibly difficult production; draconian work conditions, 80-100 hour work weeks, embezzlement of funds, key staff being kicked out/leaving and being replaced willy nilly, major layoffs...

It's a wonder it even got finished, and a miracle it turned out as great as it did.

Yeah, it's hard to believe looking at the final product, (which is one of the best games ever made in my opinion) but apparently it's development was a very rocky road.

Nintendo apparently replaced two of Retro's presidents during the production of Prime due to mismanagement.

A lot of those things above in bold  happened before and because Retro was working on 4 other games prior, all of which were not progressing well.

Those games were:

1. Car Combat game, 
2. NFL game, 
3. Action/Adventure game,  
4. Raven Blade RPG.

They were also poorly managed and unorganized at the time, in part due to an absentee president.  

During Production of Metroid Prime all the other games were cancelled with a core team being formed to work solely on Prime.  The then president and founder Jeff Spangenberg was replaced with all his shares in Retro being bought by Nintendo.  The former Vice President Steve Barcia then became President and remained President until Metroid Prime was finished.  The Prime Team did work hard and grueling days to get Prime finished, but they made an amazing product when they were done.

Some time after Prime was released the president Steve Barcia was again replaced by Michael Kelbaugh on April 11, 2003 who was a NOA guy who had a lot of experience as a manager.  Some people that were at Retro didn't like that they were getting a another new president so soon and who was from outside Retro and left when the new president joined, though a lot stayed.  Retro went on to make 2 more Metroid games and 2 Donkey Kong games.

Yeah, I'm aware of all this, I just forgot that Prime was out by the time Barcia was replaced by Kelbaugh.

I'm pretty sure production was well underway on Prime at the time of the embezzlement, layoffs, etc. Production on Prime began in 2000, and Jeff was kicked out with Nintendo's purchase of Retro in 2002, for instance.

I feel like I'm just dragging the thread off topic here though.

I still think the mass of those layoffs were due to the cutting of the 4 game projects and dissolving those 4 extra teams.  The embezzlement happening in the chaos of those changes.

The reports said that Retro had anywhere between 200 employees (source IGN) and 120 employees (source Kelbaugh) at the height of production for those 4 failed game projects.

The last of the 4 failed projects was cut at the end of July (19th) 2001, after which they solely worked on Metroid Prime.  9½ months later (May 2, 2002) Nintendo buys out Retro and replaces Spangenberg and 6½ months after that (November 17, 2002) Metroid Prime is released. 

From the credits for Metroid Prime it seems to show around 41 full time employees directly working on the game at Retro.  That make me think going from 4 full teams to 1 team accounts for most of the massive the drop in staff (200/120 to ~41).  

A lot of people were just let go after projects were terminated.

That would account for a lot of the people who left, but there were quite a few who departed Prime midway through. For example, IGN's article credits James Dargie as a source, saying he did modelling, texturing, UI, and animation for the game, but left partway through, and was not credited in the final game as much of his work was redone by others.

Another told IGN that the situation in late 2000 early 2001 was pretty bad:

"Over time I became amazed at the sense of paranoia that permeated everything at Retro. There were security cameras mounted every twenty feet in our halls, and it was common knowledge that they were for keeping track of the employees rather than protecting against anyone breaking in. Apparently the network administrator had to provide a daily sheet detailing the Internet use of every employee." Our source continues, "We were micromanaged on little things like how long we took for lunch. Retro had made a big point of hiring seasoned industry veterans to work there, but there was a major drawback to that: they had a company full of people who knew they could get better jobs elsewhere, and they often did. The common line was that employees were 'not staying at Retro in droves'. It was not uncommon to have new employees leave two or three weeks after starting. It honestly felt a little like living in a communist block country: you kind of didn't know who to trust, who would rat on you, that sort of thing."

http://au.ign.com/articles/2004/12/18/a-retrospective-the-story-of-retro-studios?page=8