| foxtail said: Metroid is considered a loss leader franchise, it draws people in who want to see more diversity in the Wii U portfolio. |
No it's not. Was NES Metroid a loss leader? Was Metroid Prime a loss leader? Those are the sales Nintendo wants and expects from Metroid games. Notice that after Super Metroid, one of the most critically-acclaimed video games of all time, the series took a long break. It could be because the game sold roughly half as well as the NES original. It didn't even sell as well as Metroid II.
Nintendo put their faith in Retro to rejuvenate the franchise, and it worked. Metroid Prime is the best-selling installment in the series. That's not a loss leader. That's a profitable game. But it's been downhill since then, with Prime 3 still not matching the first Prime's sales despite being on a much more successful console, and Other M being the worst-selling console game in the series.
If every Metroid game sold 2-3 million units, Nintendo would never stop. They would keep coming, like Kirby games. Even 1.5-2 million isn't so bad. But under 1.5 million is no good. Fans will act like 1-2 million is fine for Metroid because they want more games; they might even pretend that this is the sales range Nintendo has aimed for all along with the franchise, but it's not true. The truth is that more than half of the Metroid games released in the last two generations fell short. The only success stories were Prime 1, Prime 3, and Fusion. Prime 2 may have been 'acceptable' because it was a late-life GameCube game that could reuse assets from Prime 1, so it probably cost less to make.
I don't think Nintendo was too thrilled with sales of Prime Hunters, Other M, or even Zero Mission, though, and the proof is in the drought. It's been 4 years since the last Metroid game, 8 years since the last one on a handheld, 10 years since the last 2D game. Metroid didn't convince anyone to buy a DS or a Wii, and Nintendo knows it won't convince anyone to buy a 3DS or a Wii U unless they can reenact that magic Metroid Prime 1 formula for success again.
