The Development of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — Interview

[Wman1996]

firebush03 said:

My biggest takeaways:

(i) Either Retro is pushing the blame onto Bandai Namco for the mixed quality of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, or the game truly was a project intended to salvage the work Bandai Namco left behind.

(ii) The staff behind Metroid Prime 4: Beyond weren’t happy with the finished project (and in particular weren’t hugely keen on the implementation of open world design sprinkled throughout the game), but seem quite pleased with graphical performance.

(iii) Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was developed by a new team at Retro, entirely distinct from that of the original trilogy. This team was built from the ground up during development.

…In summary: MP4B is exactly what I thought it was— a project with a troubled development but, having already been promised to fans (and having already poured several years of funding and dev resources into the project), Nintendo didn’t want to back down. The end product is a game under other circumstances would have never seen release in its current state. That said, however, with this new MP team formed at Retro, it seems the future may be bright: If there is a MP5 coming from this same studio, I suspect there will be a major boost in quality.

Essentially the "turkey was taking too long" but they "made it this far, seems a pity to waste it."

Restarting Metroid Prime 4 a second time would likely be a disaster. If the game somehow even still came out, it might've taken until 2027 or so and cost many millions more. 

Reviews from players and the critics are mostly favorable despite not reaching the heights of previous Prime games. It's selling well so far but needs a few million or more copies to be successful it seems.

Maybe we'll get Prime 5 this generation as a Switch 2 exclusive with the team learning lessons as you said.