By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Update on Metroid Prime 4: Development restart. Retro Studios + Tanabe now working on it

Tagged games:

zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

The fact they've gone more than 5 years without having anything to show for it is in itself proof that they're failing to manage development well. Well run studios who have things under control simply don't go dark for so long. Add to that the rumors of projects stuck in limbo (which historically has happened with Retro before) and the allegations from ex-employees and I simply don't see any reason to have faith in Retro's abilities any more.

I think your missing the point, what we are saying is that any problems from ~20 years ago are irrelevant to any ongoing issues since there was a ~15 period in between of consistancy.

Okay, so let's set aside for a moment their many cancelled projects in the Prime 1 days. I still don't see any reason to have any confidence in Retro's ability to deliver Prime 4 when their days of success and delivering quality games are so long gone.



Around the Network
curl-6 said:
zorg1000 said:

I think your missing the point, what we are saying is that any problems from ~20 years ago are irrelevant to any ongoing issues since there was a ~15 period in between of consistancy.

Okay, so let's set aside for a moment their many cancelled projects in the Prime 1 days.

Are you purposely just ignoring the fact that this is a flawed argument of yours? Repeating yourself doesn't make you right ... you know  



Why am I seeing people say its coming out in 2020 or 2021? 2022 is the ABSOLUTE earliest they will release. They are reboting development, staarting from scratch.



Bet with Intrinsic:

The Switch will outsell 3DS (based on VGchartz numbers), according to me, while Intrinsic thinks the opposite will hold true. One month avatar control for the loser's avatar.

flashfire926 said:
Why am I seeing people say its coming out in 2020 or 2021? 2022 is the ABSOLUTE earliest they will release. They are reboting development, staarting from scratch.

Nintendo could make it a budget title. I mean, it would already presumably have a smaller budget than other Western AAA games but they could make it an even smaller project than some are expecting. Still, unlikely, you have to figure the level design takes a lot of time. 



curl-6 said:
zorg1000 said:

They were a chaotic new studio in 1998-2000 and that has you worried? First of all, how many people do you think worked for Retro ~20 years ago are still there? Shouldn't the ~15 years of consistent output after that have put you at ease?

Sure, the last few years may have been rough and maybe the studio is a circus now but do you really think that 20 years ago when the studio first opened is at all relevant to their current issues?

It's nothing more than a coincidence.

Well that's the thing, if we're going to say their past struggles aren't relevant any more, I'd equally say that by now their period of success is long gone enough to no longer be relevant. If we focus on the here and now, what we have is a studio that for the past 5 years have shown themselves totally incapable.

I can agree with that as there have been a whole of of people leaving and new people coming in the last 5 years so the Retro of today may not be the same Retro of 2014 outside of the name and I'm not denying that the studio may be a mess nowadays.

However it's not really 5 years of silence, DKC Returns & Tropical Freeze were both announced at E3 and released 5-8 months afterwards. Since the studio has had a ~3 year cycle in between games than the earliest we would have realistically heard from them was E3 2016 with a late 2016 or early 2017 release. So it's more like 2.5 years of silence from them as the first 2.5 years of that wouldnt have had any news regardless.

There are also rumors that they are developing Star Fox Grand Prix with a 2019 release so basically it sounds like they were developing a game that was meant for 2016/2017 that had issues and got scrapped then they started SFGP afterwards.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

Around the Network
zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

Well that's the thing, if we're going to say their past struggles aren't relevant any more, I'd equally say that by now their period of success is long gone enough to no longer be relevant. If we focus on the here and now, what we have is a studio that for the past 5 years have shown themselves totally incapable.

I can agree with that as there have been a whole of of people leaving and new people coming in the last 5 years so the Retro of today may not be the same Retro of 2014 outside of the name and I'm not denying that the studio may be a mess nowadays.

However it's not really 5 years of silence, DKC Returns & Tropical Freeze were both announced at E3 and released 5-8 months afterwards. Since the studio has had a ~3 year cycle in between games than the earliest we would have realistically heard from them was E3 2016 with a late 2016 or early 2017 release. So it's more like 2.5 years of silence from them as the first 2.5 years of that wouldnt have had any news regardless.

There are also rumors that they are developing Star Fox Grand Prix with a 2019 release so basically it sounds like they were developing a game that was meant for 2016/2017 that had issues and got scrapped then they started SFGP afterwards.

If SFGP is real and does arrive this year and is amazing I'll happily eat my words, all I'm saying is it's hard to feel confident in them under the circumstances. Heck, if you'd told me in 2014 that Retro would be handling Prime 4 I'd be Like shit yeah, I have complete faith this is gonna be a masterpiece, but so many long years tends to erode one's faith in a studio's capabilities.



Just checked. The reports that Retro Studios was a bad place of management came not from LinkedIn, but from GlassDoor, which are completely different sites in terms of reliability. I could probably make a GlassDoor account if I wanted, lie about Retro entirely, and it would never go down.

In fact, one of the reviews used for journalists to "report" on Retro's possible mismanagement even goes as far as to say that "half the team is expecting Nintendo to shut it down", even though the month after this was reported Nintendo confirmed that Retro was still hiring. How do those two ideas gel together? Now to be fair, that GlassDoor review came from May 14th, and the Retro hiring was reported on in August. But you have to assume that beyond the reporting, for those that were actually on the scene, the fate of the company couldn't have changed in such little time. Especially because they were probably hiring the entire time.

It sounds incredibly fishy.



AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Just checked. The reports that Retro Studios was a bad place of management came not from LinkedIn, but from GlassDoor, which are completely different sites in terms of reliability. I could probably make a GlassDoor account if I wanted, lie about Retro entirely, and it would never go down.

In fact, one of the reviews used for journalists to "report" on Retro's possible mismanagement even goes as far as to say that "half the team is expecting Nintendo to shut it down", even though the month after this was reported Nintendo confirmed that Retro was still hiring. How do those two ideas gel together? Now to be fair, that GlassDoor review came from May 14th, and the Retro hiring was reported on in August. But you have to assume that beyond the reporting, for those that were actually on the scene, the fate of the company couldn't have changed in such little time. Especially because they were probably hiring the entire time.

It sounds incredibly fishy.

And again...as I mentioned in a previous post, Nintendo knows more than we know about Retro's last 5 years.  They evidently still have tremendous faith in this developer or they wouldn't take this PR disaster and name Retro their savior.  That would be like doubling down on a bad mistake.  At some point in time we have to start trusting Nintendo's actions and less the rumored disgruntled employee who may have some personal beef with the company.

At this point no one in this thread will be right or wrong about any of these statements.  It's all conjecture.  The date of release, Retro's current state of affairs, whether this game will be on Switch or Switch 2 or both.  The only thing we know for certain is that Nintendo just gave the smackdown to some unknown (to us) developer and told them to stop messing with an IP they obviously value very much.  I've been hoping Retro would be involved in this project since it was announced and whether by accident or design that's exactly where we are right now and I couldn't be happier...I mean, all things considered.  



For those saying late 2022 and such starting from scratch doesn't exactly mean all assets are dropped things like the game's engine, certain maps and various models can still be used to speed things up. Chances are them telling us today possibly means the actions they talked about today likely took place over the last month or so maybe even more.



curl-6 said:
zorg1000 said:

I can agree with that as there have been a whole of of people leaving and new people coming in the last 5 years so the Retro of today may not be the same Retro of 2014 outside of the name and I'm not denying that the studio may be a mess nowadays.

However it's not really 5 years of silence, DKC Returns & Tropical Freeze were both announced at E3 and released 5-8 months afterwards. Since the studio has had a ~3 year cycle in between games than the earliest we would have realistically heard from them was E3 2016 with a late 2016 or early 2017 release. So it's more like 2.5 years of silence from them as the first 2.5 years of that wouldnt have had any news regardless.

There are also rumors that they are developing Star Fox Grand Prix with a 2019 release so basically it sounds like they were developing a game that was meant for 2016/2017 that had issues and got scrapped then they started SFGP afterwards.

If SFGP is real and does arrive this year and is amazing I'll happily eat my words, all I'm saying is it's hard to feel confident in them under the circumstances. Heck, if you'd told me in 2014 that Retro would be handling Prime 4 I'd be Like shit yeah, I have complete faith this is gonna be a masterpiece, but so many long years tends to erode one's faith in a studio's capabilities.

I dont blame you at all for not being confident based on the last few years, I'm definitely going to take a wait and see approach with this, I just didnt agree with your argument about the period of 1998-2000.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.