YongYea's video on how Nintendo has handled the this was pretty good. He does hit the same Activision/EA/Bethesda suck notes he often does ( I don't disagree ), but I found the comparisons and contrast to Nintendo almost humorous.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. This all happened half a year ago, and even though announcements can take a long time to make, everything we know thus far makes it sound like Retro was just handed the project very recently. The rumor you are using wasn't even close to being official, it's not like it was very credible in the first place. It was just a review on a site where anyone can make reviews. Even the review didn't state that Nintendo was considering closing Retro, it said that "half the team is expecting Nintendo to shut it down", which are very different claims and the nuance in them is important. The rumor is easy to believe because people are extremely gullible when gaming companies don't make light of what projects they're working on. It's especially easy to believe if said person doesn't like Retro ...

That being said, you could be absolutely right. That's what sucks, we simply don't know.  Hopefully they have something else to deliver besides Metroid, because if their other project(s) was/were canned, then that means 3-5 more years without any Retro game.

You do realise Metroid was created by Japanese men?

Also you've got Shigeru Miyamoto and Kensuke Tanabe to thank for the Metroid Prime games.

And its not like Yoshio Sakamoto wasn't involved in Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, or Metroid: Zero Mission as director. Oh wait...

Eh, we all have our bad moments. He also produced Samus Returns.

From what i heard, Federation Force wasnt even that bad of a game, it mostly got hated on because of the character models and because it had been such a long time since a traditional/mainline title released.

If a well received mainline title released a year or two before Federation Force and it didnt have chibi characters than I think the backlash would have been significantly smaller.

If Nintendo were to be criticized for one thing when it comes to handling Metroid, it is the messaging behind the development of Federation Force. They probably could've ensured that Federation Force is not the only game coming from the Metroid franchise, but things happen and circumstances affect how Nintendo was able to manage the message.

They were able to manage the messaging with Prime 4 and Samus Returns so it makes you wonder why they couldn't have done that with Federation Force that would have allowed everyone to be on their merry way instead of being on pins and needles on the future of the franchise.

Metroid is a weird series. For all the acclaim and accolades the series has received over the course of its existence, it has not translated into sales that even Kirby and Donkey Kong earn at times (4-6 million). It feels like it has to release under certain circumstances in order to potentially sell well (3-5 million or so).

That's true. The Wii U was in a no-win situation as it had very little momentum even with Splatoon's surprising success. Thus, Nintendo looked forward with the Switch (then-NX).

I also heard that Federation Force is actually a good game but why did it have to be a Metroid spin-off? It could have been a stand-alone game and everything would be fine. It's not so that the name 'Metroid' guarantees sales. Metroid never sold BIG numbers. Of course they would have need to made a complete stand-alone game in its own universe with it's own story, completely not connected to Metroid and thus could also not be named Federation Force (the characters could not have been from the Federation Force of the Metroid universe).

It's a pin off for the same reason many other franchises have spin offs to add new branches where they can utilize approaches that wouldn't suit the mainline games many franchises have lore and universes that can compliment and be applied to other approaches.