When will we see it again?
A new Metroid Prime 4 recruiting ad lets us know that the game is still in active development, though it’s been a while since we’ve heard from it.
If you recall, Metroid Prime 4 has had a heck of a development cycle, and we haven’t even really seen it yet outside of a logo. Wildly, it looked like Retro Studios was not handling the game when it was announced five years ago. A year after that, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé confirmed that the game was “still in development” and “proceeding well,” but we hadn’t seen anything public yet. A year after that we were assured it was “well into production,” but then something monumental happened; the company seemingly started over.
Senior managing executive officer Shinya Takahashi used the words “restart from the beginning,” with Retro Studios taking over because of quality concerns. It was a wild about-face, but it’s probably what people wanted anyway with Retro at the helm.
Now in 2022, we’re getting another update, although this one is indirect. The Retro Studios Twitter account noted this week through a Metroid Prime 4 recruiting ad: “We are looking for a tools engineer and a technology engineer to join us on our journey to develop Metroid Prime 4!” Retro then provided this link to their job openings site.
At the moment Retro Studios as a whole has openings for a concept artist, an environment designer, a material artist, character artist, UI artist, UI scripter, technology engineer, environmental artist, environmental terrain artist, and tools engineer. It’s a lot of openings, and Metroid Prime 4 seemingly has a while to go yet.