And this right here, is why I am beginning to fear for the future of Xenoblade.

To Nintendo Metroid is a B franchise along with Star Fox and F Zero. Sure the games are high quality and have a dedicated following, but in sales and popularity Metroid pales in comparison to Mario, Pokemon, Mario Kart, Smash and Animal Crossing, I'm even willing to bet that Splatoon has elevated above Metroid in Nintendo's eyes. As is evident with Nintendo they focus on their main sellers and you have a huge wait for games like Metroid, F Zero, Wave Race etc, or your even lucky to get another one of those games at all. Nintendo really do need to give other franchises more of a push to diversify their library, fill 3rd party games and give those franchises chance to grow.

Metroid Prime 4 with Prime Hunters multiplayer would probably sell the best in the series. its multiplayer could be attractive to more casual players and a broader market in general.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that it's a slow paced FPS. That genre just works a lot better in a more fast paced setting, because slow paced FPS titles tend to feel very empty.

Some will explain this away using the highly pretentious label of 'first person adventure'
But that doesn't automatically make the formula any better than what it is.

Play Metroid Prime now, there's nothing really standout about it. At the time it had its pretty graphics, but today they are quite dated. Aside from tedious gameplay it is also very repetitive, scanning all sorts of things for dozens and dozens of generic messages, looking for that needle in the haystack. The flipping back and forth between scanning and shooting can make the game feel disjointed, and as clunky as the tank-like aiming controls.

Looking back on the game, it was very artistically pleasing in its time, but as a game it is just not very interesting. In my opinion, vastly overrated.

A new Metroid Prime from Retro? The team is gone, it would be an almost completely different team starting from scratch. As members of the original game left, even reviewers noted the marked decline of the second game, and then further decline on the third game. Next thing you know Retro is taking 3-5 years to make each of the two 2D Platformer games they've released over the last decade.

I have been playing Metriod Prime from the Prime trilogy last week and must agree with your comments on Prime. One thing i loved about Other M was the 3rd person view gave back a sense of speed and movement. In the first person view it doesn't work that well.

I think many have already described the problem pretty well, everything about the game is niche. The gameplay is fairly complex, the setting is odd sci-fi and the name sounds weird. And all this was quite intentional, the game is supposed to mirror a movie like Alien - creepy, interesting and weird.

To maximize sales I've said for some time it should switch to 3rd person adventure with shooting elements, a game that could draw inspiration from Super Metroid as well as modern games like TLOU or Batman:AA. We'll see if they ever do that.

Yeah, better keep Retro away of Metroid. They can keep doing their 2D DK games.

We need an ambitious team to take on the task. Hopefully Sakamoto can gather an EPD team to develop internally.

Well, looking at the sales on NES, they're actually really good. It's not the juggernaut that was Super Mario Bros or The Legend Of Zelda, but it's a top-20 game saleswise on NES anyway. Wii was the first Nintendo home console to actually sell in Europe, so NES and SNES games are relatively skewed towards NA. Metroid sales are past 3 million when you count in the GBA re-release.

So, Metroid on NES sold really well. Super Metroid had the problem of being too easy - which was disappointing to all the Metroid fans - on top of that, it released too close to Donkey Kong Country. The Metroid Prime games aren't accessible at all, even if the sales of Prime was great on Gamecube. Other M is just crap.
Metroid seems to be at it's best every time the game is hard and you're all alone in the game world.

in my opinion? The old ones were two hard and complicated for alot of us kids. The peak of the series (imo) was prime. But, that unfortunately came out on a console that didn't sell too well. The wii sold well, but didn't have the right demographic to support the games. I think there's alot of potential with metroid and other nintendo series, but they've got to modernize at least a little. OtherM was a nice change of pace with actual story-telling, but the poor vocal direction and wonky controls left it with much of that potential still unfulfilled. May be time to reboot the series. Hope the nx iteration knocks it out of the park. My worst fear is that they chicken out and make an old-skool 2d metroid and release it at full retail price. That would just be playing it safe and trying to cash in on nostalgia. A 2d metroid would be cool.... as an eshop exclusive.

So, there's Metroid, Metroid II, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission, Metroid Prime Trilogy and Metroid Other M available in Virtual Console, and you think people would be buying new 2D Metroid because of nostalgia? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.