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

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IamAwsome on 25 January 2019
super_etecoon said:
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.  

After Federation Flop this shouldn't surprise anyone. As for Retro, I'm surprised Tanabe is producing this with them. They were rumored to not be on good terms and they supposedly asked for more autonomy (which likely played a part in everything else that was rumored there). 



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jason1637 on 25 January 2019

IIRC Retro has been working on a new game since the Wii U days. So we might get that in 2020 and Metriod in 2023.



slab_of_bacon on 26 January 2019

If Nintendo scrapped years of work just to get it right... I think with the right guidance we will see greatness. I would also love to see local and online multiplayer as well... and if there must be cutscenes, let them be steamy moments with Samus!



Feel free to check out my stream on twitch 

ARamdomGamer on 26 January 2019

Pretty happy about this, feel more confident seeing Prime go back to one of my favorite developers.



Shaqazooloo0 on 26 January 2019

That sucks but I super appreciate Nintendo letting us know what's going on. I'm also happy that Retro's doing it now, tbh I kind of don't trust Japanese dev's with Metroid...

Kresnik said:
couchmonkey said: 
Oh snap! In my opinion, Nintendo really shouldn’t have announced the game so early, Switch was already selling great. 2017 me would slap me for asking this, but I wonder if Retro is still up to the task? It’s been like a decade since the last one. Still more faith than putting it in some brand new hands.

It is slightly odd. This announcement felt very much like Nintendo in 2013 Wii-U mode where they announced a load of stuff that was years away like Xenoblade and Zelda. Not sure why they felt the need to do that! But to be fair, Sony has done it plenty too despite leading the pack for years.

I think the scenario was, that if they didn't, people were gonna be pissed that a Metroid game was announced for the 3DS but not the Switch. They didn't want another Federation Force like reaction that'd cause Samus Returns, to bomb.



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Cobretti2 on 26 January 2019

Disappointing but if they feel the game was not up to par then so be it.

better to make that decision and tell the fans then release a crap game.



 

 

Spindel on 26 January 2019

*Looks at  Bethesda Softworks*

You could learn something from this!



Jumpin on 26 January 2019

Whatever Retro was doing before, it's no secret Nintendo was about to close them down.

In my opinion, they're sacrificing Metroid to make an example out of Retro before they shut down the studio. I am unsure Nintendo themselves knows how to handle a title that needs such a large budget, but probably won't bring in the sales to justify it.

We'll see. It depends how many people Nintendo hires for Retro. If they go above 150 it will look like a more serious attempt - which is about the size of dev teams for those sorts of games about 15 years ago (note that Bioshock had a team in the 150-200 range and it took them about 10 years to make that game, although it DID go through multiple iterations due to hardware updates). This is a game that needs a team staffed with a minimum of 350 in order to succeed and get it out within 3-4 years in making a decent quality FPS comparable to the last generation of consoles. Top FPS titles last gen were staffed at 500-750.

If they don't go above 60, then we know what's about to go down.

Last edited by Jumpin - on 26 January 2019

I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

AngryLittleAlchemist on 26 January 2019
Jumpin said:

Whatever Retro was doing before, it's no secret Nintendo was about to close them down.

It's not a secret, it's just a highly publicized rumor from a site that is easy to manipulate and conflicts with statements that came out with verifiable evidence after that Retro was hiring ...  



BlackBeauty on 26 January 2019

It’s good for them to realize how important the Prime series is to their  catalogue.

A mature SOLO female lead action game. Not many is doing that.

Hope the long wait is worth it.