Metroid Prime 4: Will We Ever Get A Sequel?
When Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 during E3 2017, fans were overjoyed. The company hadn't delivered a new entry in the Prime series since 2007's Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and it was high time Samus Aran got a chance to erase the memory of flops like Metroid: Other M. You might recall that 2017 was the year the Nintendo Switch launched with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and later got Super Mario Odyssey during the holidays. The Metroid Prime 4 announcement only cemented the console's stellar year, and proved once and for all that Nintendo was back.
Samus, unfortunately, wouldn't be back as quickly as people had hoped.
In January 2019, Nintendo's Shinya Takahashi had to break the bad news: development on Metroid Prime 4 had to be restarted entirely, and that meant there was no release date in sight. So here we are, over a year later at the time of this writing, wondering if we'll ever see Metroid Prime 4 at all. Will we? There are definitely reasons to worry. There are also some reasons to be hopeful.
Will Metroid Prime 4 be cancelled?
It wouldn't be entirely shocking if Nintendo decided to stop work on Metroid Prime 4. After all, the company can point to a number of Metroid releases that haven't fared so well these past few years. It goes without saying that some of these games haven't been what fans were hoping for. But Nintendo could very well look at their performances and deduce that interest in the Metroid franchise is waning.
On the other hand, though, there may be no better way to revitalize Metroid than by revisiting the Prime series, which was immensely popular on both the GameCube and the Wii. And don't take it as gospel, but there have been rumors that Nintendo plans to re-release the entire Metroid Prime trilogy on the Nintendo Switch at some point. That's the kind of move that would make sense if the re-release was an appetizer — a way to get fans ready for the main course. It would make even more sense for that main course to be Metroid Prime 4.
As of now, Metroid Prime 4 is still in development. We will be sure to update you if that changes.