According to a rumor I've been seeing, the original plan was for Retro to do this kind of full remaster for the whole trilogy, but that was changed after the original developers of Prime 4 were fired and Retro was given that project. Nintendo outsourced the remasters of Primes 2 and 3 to other studios so that Retro wouldn't have to work on 4 games at once. I'd say to take this with a grain of salt, but at the same time it does make sense to me.

Where'd this rumor originate?

It says a lot about how brilliant Metroid Prime is in terms of game design that with a cosmetic overhaul it still holds up as a great game 21 years after its original release.

Not many games that old have aged so gracefully.

The original rumor seems to come from this post from September 2021 about what Retro has been doing, which has been referenced in recent articles by Twisted Voxel, which in turn have been used in Youtube videos about what's going on with Retro Studios and all the Prime games.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nintendo-working-on-metroid-prime-1-re-release-remaster-remake-for-release-in-2022-emily-roger-up-other-insiders-corroborate.490360/page-11#post-73958365

Some games really do get better with a change in control scheme. The remaster of Metroid Prime, AND GoldenEye on Xbox One, prove that. ^^

Looks like the physical copies sold out quickly, I’ve seen people complaining about it. Who all held out for the physical copy?

Looks like they’re selling for around $80 on eBay.

Apparently it's still topping the eshop sales charts, in addition to the physical version selling out.
Seems Nintendo didn't anticipate this much demand.

The game aged so well. Let’s hope Nintendo takes note and produce actual remasters of the 2 sequels instead of the rumoured up-resed ports.

Imagine going through Echoes’ two worlds in a more seem-less manner, instead of having to endlessly go through the same teleporting animation… An actual remaster/remake of the game could fix that lengthy sequence and make the game that much more enjoyable to navigate.

Yeah while I'm in two minds about Retro themselves commiting their time to two more remasters on top of Prime 4, Sanctuary Fortress or Skytown would look gorgeous in this engine/style.

Prime 1 remains the best game in the trilogy, but 2 and 3 are still phenomenal games in my opinion.

My biggest fear if they do a Prime 2 remaster, is not doing exactly this... since despite Prime 1 having no loading between rooms anymore, they still kept the elevator transitions the same. Those dark world loading screens were a real pain in Echoes.

If there's one other thing I wished they changed in it, but they won't, is the auto-healing inside light beacons. I get why they put that in the game, to ensure the dark world isn't too hard, it's almost a failsafe method of ensuring the player can always progress even if short on E-tanks or whatever. But it's tedious. Replaces what should be an intense atmosphere, with... waiting. Like, putting the controller down and picking up your phone kind of waiting. It just kills the mood. It'd be much better if they replaced it with, say, more things you can shoot for energy drops.

Think with those changes Prime 2 would be nearly perfect. But even without them, it's such a great game. I'm watching a friend play through the Gamecube version and he just got to the Sanctuary Fortress, it's crazy to think what it'd look like if they give it a remaster.

And yeah Prime 3 as well... Prime 3 already had a lot going for it visually, Bryyo, Skytown, Pirate Homeworld, these places looked super cool. Really hope we get all games remastered.