$60M. I’d make it basically two games - one with a solid, $25M solo Metroid experience and another that’s just an online multiplayer component with $35M in it that takes a lot of influence from early Halo. Nintendo lacks strong online and AAA games and they could easily use Metroid to fix some of their issues.

Nintendo needs to give the ip to another dev. This series belonged to gunpei yokoi I don’t think it’s ever going to be done the right way like the first three were. Hate to say it but my favorite series is over. I don’t trust Nintendo to do it justice. It was nice of them to try but they just don’t get it.

Metroid has a lot of potential, it's just a shame Nintendo doesn't see it.

Add an easier mode where exploration isn't as difficult (something like Zero Mission's map) and a multiplayer mode similar to Prime Hunters, market the hell out of it, and boom, another major franchise.

Kirby for Switch probably had higher budget than 1.5 to 4 million, you can't really expect that full AAA 3D game in 2018. has budget of only few millions.

And like people stated, point of Metroid Prime 4 is not to be huge seller and to make huge profit, point is to attract more hard core gamers to Switch with mature sci-fi adventure FPS.

Zelda is one of most important Nintendo IP, Zelda BotW is game that was 5 years in development and in one point there were more than 300 people working on Zelda game, and Zelda BotW had huge marketing push, I mean we even had hole E3 around Zelda BotW. I dont think that any other Nintendo game is coming even close with budget to Zelda BotW, so even thinking that Nintendo could invest even similar budget in Metroid Prime 4 (or even any other Nintendo IP any time soon) is not realistic at all.

I agree with your other points, but that doesnt meant that MP4 needs budget similar to Zelda BotW, they could probably made quite good and strong MP4 game even with $10-20m budget.

Well informations we have (Eurogamer also confirmed that) is that Namco Bandai is working on Metroid Prime 4.

I'd put every cent into it that I could afford in order to make it as good as the first game and I would accept nothing less. Metroid is a franchise that NEEDS to exist. It diversifies Nintendo's IP exponentially and keeps their library of games from being too "samey".

Nintendo said BOTW needed to sell 2 million to break even, so they could spend as much on MP4 and still make it back as it would outsell any previous Metroid game just like other franchises on Switch are outselling all previous entries. I'm not saying Nintendo will do so, they won't, but they could afford to if they wanted to really make it the best it can be.

Yeah, of course they could, but they want.

If they expect Metroid Prime 4 to sell roughly on par with previous Metroid games then I doubt they're putting more than 40 million at most on the game. Only two games in the series have ever sold over 2 million copies, so if we consider 3 million copies as the optimal ceiling for the game, Nintendo isn't going to spend a huge amount of money on a title they know is relatively niche compared to their big IPs.

That depends on what kind of new scope/reboot it has.

Regular singleplayer                                                          < 20m
Expansive Multiplayer/ online component                   < 30m

Since we don't actually know Nintendo's usual budgets, this one's kind of tricky.

And I'm not going to go off assumptions on internal budgeting with these guys.

I will say that they ought to spend enough for the game to not just look like something they felt they had to do to appeal to certain audiences. This has to feel like something they really want as a showpiece.

Otherwise it won't excite the people they origianlly hooked with the announcement. Less than BotW will do. But it can't look like they're aren't giving it their all.