Nintendo Admits Metroid Prime: 4 Beyond Took Much Longer Than Expected To Make
George is the Lead News Editor for TheGamer and an advocate for wearing Psychonauts goggles whenever possible. He tries, bless him.
Nintendo has acknowledged that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond took “much longer than expected to finish”, and that a development reboot was “out of the question” because of it.
When it comes to long-delayed games, Metroid Prime 4 has to be up there as one of the most notable examples. Originally announced all the way back in 2017 (a whole decade after Prime 3’s launch), Prime 4 suffered through a hefty and troubled development cycle, including a reboot in 2019, before eventually being re-revealed as Beyond in 2024.
Although Beyond saw decent reviews at launch, it’s fair to say that many think it hasn’t lived up to the near-decade of hype and extended development time. One of the big reasons for mixed responses is Prime 4’s semi-open-world approach, which Nintendo has explained as being a result of how long Beyond took to make.
Nintendo Knows That Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Took Too Long To Make
A Second Reboot Was Out Of The Question , Though
Retro Studios isn’t changing up the classic formula very much with Metroid Prime 4.
The Nintendo representative notes that, at the start of the project, the team saw a lot of comments about wanting an open-world Metroid, which led to the design of the infamous desert hub between levels. Since Metroid Prime 4: Beyond “took much longer than expected to finish”, the team realised that players had changed their “impressions” of open-world games during the game’s development.
Even with that in mind, Nintendo knew that “backtracking development again” was “out of the question” since Prime 4 had already taken so much time and been rebooted once before. This meant that the team moved forward with the desert hub-world and kept the game’s original pace, instead of trying to reform it once again and go for a truly open-world approach like players might have wanted.
That being said, development had already been reset once before (when we started again from scratch with Retro Studios) so backtracking development again was out of the question, and we resolved to move forward with our original vision. – Nintendo
While the tone of a written interview is a little hard to pin down, it does sound a little like Nintendo acknowledging some of Prime 4: Beyond’s mistakes and explaining why the divisive and outdated hub world ended up being included in the final game. If nothing else, though, it’s very clear that Nintendo has heard the response to Beyond and is well aware of how drawn-out the whole creation process was.
Developers are reportedly crunching on Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet at Naughty Dog.
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