It's not about if Metroid needs it, it's about selling more copies. And that's what Metroid truly needs.

Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fates are a good example of what the Metroid franchise could do to become more popular. So what if there would be a kissing scene with a girl near the end of a Metroid game? If it sells 300k extra copies who's going to complain? And yes, people are this shallow.

No argument here. I'm just saying. I don't want anymore sterotypes either. If some game does have her fall for someone in the future.

...with all due respect, that's the most backwards perception I've come across on this thread.

Could Metroid sell more by making her lesbian or bisexual? Possibly. It would certainly get more attention, if nothing else, but I'm not sure an increase in headlines would necessarily translate into sales. Games that have been very controversial in the past (DmC) and sold quite poorly. 

That, however, isn't the issue. There's three much bigger issues I have with this; first and foremost is that the ideal behind it is quite possibly everything that is wrong with video games today. As soon as "this is a good idea because it boosts sales" becomes our main focus point, we might as well turn Metroid into a standard linear military 3rd person shooter and go home. More people buy those, after all. Perhaps it's not as big a leap (especially since it's not a gameplay change), but it's the same sort of thinking that lead to the demise of franchises like Dead Space. Who cares what we have to do to the core mechanics or character in order to sell copies? Just toss it in there to boost sales.

Secondly, how would this even make sense with Samus' character? Sure, we don't know a ton about her, but we're very aware that she's independent and probably a recluse as well. I can't imagine that one of the galaxy's most famous (read: most wanted) bounty hunters would be either forming stable relationships or just sleeping around. For someone who's seemed pretty uncomfortable in social settings the few times we've seen her interact with others (Metroid Prime 3, Other M, Fusion), it makes very little sense.

Finally , though, it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. Metroid has never been about sexuality. How would something like this even be implemented in any meaningful way? If it's stuck into the middle of a game, that's terrible for pretty obvious reasons (pacing, immersion, isolation, etc.). If it's a post ending sequence, it might be even worse, because it's the most token, shallow attention grab ever made. And that's not something Metroid should ever be. Romance has been crowbarred into so many series thus far, from Silent Hill to Prince of Persia, to whatever the heck was happening in the last two Batman games, and I can honestly say I can't think of a single game series with a protagonist that started romanceless and later became involved that benefitted from doing so.

If we are honestly at the point where the only way a game series can continue is by shoehorning in elements (romance or otherwise) that are totally out of place and don't fit with the character at all, then let's just end the series. Seriously. I'd rather have things just end that have game writers continually stretch things out, looking for the next "shocking" thing to stick in there in order to attact more sales.

Amen.

I used Fire Emblem as an example for a reason. The last two games have added a lot of sexual content to the games in order to sell more content, but the core gameplay still remains intact. You need to find a fine balance between the two, but it's certainly not impossible.

That's like saying "Because romance doesn't ruin Mass Effect, it won't ruin any other game it gets put into." Fire Emblem is a game that's built on interacting with a number of different characters and developing some level of attachment to them. Romance is a workable next step. For a series built entirely around isolation, it's about as out of place as Skrillex in a classical music convention.

That's why you'd hire good and competent writers...

Even if you could somehow hire the most competent writers on the planet, it still wouldn't work. Regardless of how good your writers are, you can't suddenly redefine a character without people raising some objections, especially since God knows how this would even be written into the plot.

You're talking about the franchise that awards you with a picture of Samus in a bikini if you beat it fast enough...

I'd argue that that was generally a mistake too, because it comes off as pretty shallow to me as well. With that said, having a picture of someone in a sexy outfit is far easier to get away with than showing a picture of someone engaging in sexual conduct (or romantic conduct if we're not going that far) because one can reasonably make the argument that Samus simply wears these clothes all the time. Which is somewhat reasonable, considering that she might at any time need to run for her life or activate her power suit, and wearing constricting clothing would get in the way of that. There's at least some logic behind it (mostly thinking of Zero Mission here).

There's no logic or sense behind this. Not only is it a blatant attention grab, but it makes no sense, given the character and the series we're dealing with.

Actually, it probably wouldn't. Metriod wouldn't even be the first game to do that with one of its characters but the bigger more concrete issue would be the same as the lame story instances from Other M and the crying we hear about Federation Force, the Metriod core fanbase doesn't care about that sort of stuff and the fans you will pull aren't going to be enough if they aren't behind the game.

The Metriod camp primarily wants the gameplay experience, a few would like a deeper story but it is more about exploring alien terrain and battling diverse creatures while gaining powers. Samus being a attractive woman adds to the appeal but it isn't the focus for most fans and more then anything having a solid to great gameplay experience will pretty much be the basis for any Metriod game.  Also people would complain, jeez would people complain especially the hardcore conservative crowds that may not care about their kids playing that 'robot' game now but when they here the robot is a woman that kisses other women on the screen they will flip and probably petition to have her removed from future Smash Bros games.

People are that crazy, Nintendo knows this and wouldn't want the controversy. Fire Emblem can get away with it since those groups probably already wouldn't support the game due to it usually having gods, magic, fantasy and other things that can be considered 'devil craft'. But a character as popular as Samus isn't so popular that a minor controversy couldn't cause Nintendo to put her on ice outside of maybe appearing in Smash Bros games for a long while.

Edit:But I will say once again, a new Metriod game with some of Other M's game play mechanics polished would be a very good game. I personally don't know if Nintendo or Retro have it in them to create another game in Prime's style that would be as good as the first game which it would be compared to like its sequels.

Nintendo dresses Link up as a girl and no one cares.

You'd be surprised what you could do with good writers. They could focus on the hardship of coming out of the closet in an intolerant society. You don't even need words or kissing scenes to tell a story like this. You could do it through scan logs of for example space pirates who could mock homosexual people and Samus in particular. They're not the most tolerant society after all. They could also use the American army as an inspiration for how the Galactic Federation views homosexuality (don't ask, don't tell).

We could then get Samus her views on all this through inner monologues during elevator rides à la Metroid: Fusion.

You guys have a way too narrow view on how you can tell a great (back- or side-) story based around someone's sexuality. There's much more you can do then show two girls kissing. You don't even need to introduce a partner for Samus, she could be perfectly single and still be gay.

The argument is not to make her gay. Because that is a sterotype, in her position. Which is what Other M did already. Not the aspect of a compelling story narative.

...two very big problems with that.

One...how would the Pirates even know she's gay? Did Samus have a big coming out of the closet party? Send a postcard to the Federation letting them know she's openly homosexual? The Pirates (and really, everybody else) should be even more in the dark as to her sexuality than we are. 

Two, there's no way to integrate that into the larger story in any meaningful way, mostly because it would be entirely focused on Samus' feelings. The big difference between the interesting dialogue in Fusion and the awful dialogue in Other M is that Fusion's dialogue rarely focuses on her emotions. In fact, the only time she brings her feelings into this is to say that the computer isn't like Adam, and, not-so-coincidentially, that happens to be the worst bit of monologuing in the game. Whenever Samus has attempted to describe her feelings in game, it's come off as very awkward and out of place, and for good reason. It's not solely because Nintendo sucks at writing, it's also largely due to the fact that her character simply isn't one that's built around openly expressing emotion. In fact one could argue that, from what we've seen of her, she consistently makes an effort to keep her emotions close to the vest, so to speak.

Therein lies the problem with building some kind of storyline off of Samus' sexuality. It would need to be based entirely on her feelings, and you simply can't have a story like Metroid where the protagonist's feelings are one of the big selling points. Metroid is based on immersion above all else. You can have a story where Samus discovers information about what's going on, and perhaps even comments on that discovery herself, because the player and Samus are still discovering that information simultaneously. Samus' comments are just an optional tidbit that doesn't really do anything. In a storyline focusing on her sexuality (or on focusing on how she handles the responses to her sexuality), Samus' comments are basically half the story. The way she feels about it is what the story is focusing on. That creates a gap between player and character, a major rift that breaks the sense of immersion.

The idea you've mentioned could be an interesting story if done on its own, but it just doesn't fit into a Metroid game. At all. Metroid stories are focused around being a detective and uncovering what's gone on, not figuring out what some jerk wrote about you on his blog and watching a character react to that.