Let's guess what happens/happened with Retro Studios.

[lunanto]

My bet is that they had one or two projects that didn't meet the expectations and had to be cancelled for one or another reason. (At this point, it is hard for me to believe they have something finished waiting to be announced)

In the meantime, IIRC they have helped in other projects like Labo and have ported DKTF to the Switch.

Now they ve been given Metroid Prime 4 as a sign of trust from Nintendo.

(The other option is they ve faced serious internal/organizative problems in this period of time)

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

Yeah ngl kinda worried about MP4 if Nintendo or Retro kept cancelling their projects.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

They have no credited works for the last five years over than Tropical Freeze Switch so they probably didn't help on any other projects except maybe Labo.

Their lead game designer and lead narrative designer left together September 2017 so I'm guessing that's when their game was cancelled. Then they did random shit for a year or so until they were moved onto Prime 4.

 

[Gay Bowser]

My bet is that they had one or two projects that didn't meet the expectations and had to be cancelled for one or another reason. (At this point, it is hard for me to believe they have something finished waiting to be announced)

In the meantime, IIRC they have helped in other projects like Labo and have ported DKTF to the Switch.

Now they ve been given Metroid Prime 4 as a sign of trust from Nintendo.

(The other option is they ve faced serious internal/organizative problems in this period of time)

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Question: isn't having half a decade's worth of "projects that didn't meet expectations and had to be cancelled" the same thing as "facing serious internal problems"?

 

[Idontwantit]

They finished a game and sent it to Nintendo, but it got lost in the mail.

 

[@dedmunk]

Look at my dang avatar.

Why has Nintendo trusted them with MP4 if they can't get a project to completion all these years?

Maybe the train of thought was along the lines of at least they have done Metroid in the past?

 

[lunanto]

Question: isn't having half a decade's worth of "projects that didn't meet expectations and had to be cancelled" the same thing as "facing serious internal problems"?

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Yes, they may be definitely be related. But by that, I meant people leaving the company, change of positions and that kind of stuff that is not directly related, but can affect in great degree the development of a videogame.

 

[carlosrox]

My guess is they were having major troubles internally and Nintendo finally stepped in to truly whip them into shape, set things straight, and they'll make damn sure Prime 4 ends up being a BOTW style win for them.

The future of the Metroid series is at stake here. Nintendo's not gonna fuck it up.

I mean they can still fall back on 2D Metroid but a failed Prime 4 would be pretty devastating for the series I think.

 

[Deleted member 37233]

Isn't this "Retro worked on Labo" just a joke? Or is there a real source for that claim?

 

[lunanto]

Do you think Metroid Prime 4 is the last chance for them?

 

[Yoshimitsu126]

Man at this point i want to know what their cancelled projects are.

 

[teacup]

My guess is they were having major troubles internally and Nintendo finally stepped in to truly whip them into shape, set things straight, and they'll make damn sure Prime 4 ends up being a BOTW style win for them.

The future of the Metroid series is at stake here. Nintendo's not gonna fuck it up.

I mean they can still fall back on 2D Metroid but a failed Prime 4 would be pretty devastating for the series I think.

Click to shrink...

Why are you acting like Nintendo hasn't absolutely cratered series in the past and not cared at all? Star Fox Zero. Hell, Metroid Other M? There hasn't been a Metroid Prime game in HOW long now? F Zero?

I'm hopeful for this but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

 

[Nightengale]

Making games are hard, and we have limited visibility on what could've caused what's presumably happened to happen.

All I know is that Nintendo chose to re-entrust Metroid Prime 4 back to Rare in spite clear visibility of everything's that could have transpired, so I have enough faith that things are fine enough.

P.S. I don't automatically assume that to be a sure-fire thing to be honest. Nintendo was also wiling to entrust Metroid Prime 4 to what was presumably Bandai Namco Singapore, whom to my knowledge, had never lead the creative development of a AAA project prior to that game, so =P

 

[Adventureracing]

At this point retro almost makes square look like a well oiled machine. It's pretty incredible how long they've went without a single release and considering how big of a project prime 4 is it's probably going to be a while before we see that either.

 

[Deleted member 10737]

honestly i'm not worried. it sucks if whatever they've been working on (or or more projects) for these years has been cancelled, but the fact that nintendo trusts them with MP4 is a good enough sign for me that they'll be alright.

 

[Idontwantit]

honestly i'm not worried. it sucks if whatever they've been working on (or or more projects) for these years has been cancelled, but the fact that nintendo trusts them with MP4 is a good enough sign for me that they'll be alright.

Click to shrink...

Nintendo trusted some unknown Namco studio with Prime 4 too though...

 

[Dark Cloud]

The funny thing is Retro ported DKCTF and made plenty more money from that compared to the Wii U version.

Imran said Retro pitched a demo to Nintendo and they liked it enough to turn the game over to them. So it does beg the question what happened? It appears they were developing 2 games. One started after TF and one started around 2016.

The first game is assumed to be canned or put on hiatus for a while now with key members leavng in 2017. The second game that started around 2016 is what gets me. There's no way Retro could fail YET again? 2 games in a row? They had to be smart enough to make something they knew wouldn't have given them issues.

Like I said in another topic- if Metroid Prime 4 never had development problems then Retro wouldn't be working on the game right now. So then what? Is that second game not in development? They would've been making something without MP4. Nintendo isn't going to close the studio down.

 

[Deleted member 10737]

Nintendo trusted some unknown Namco studio with Prime 4 too though...

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but you won't give a project that was cancelled because the development wasn't going well to ANOTHER studio when you're not sure they're gonna do it right.

 

[Future Gazer]

but you won't give a project that was cancelled because the development wasn't going well to ANOTHER studio when you're not sure they're gonna do it right.

Click to shrink...

Who else were they gonna give it to? It's not like Nintendo had many options.

 

[Strings]

Do you think Metroid Prime 4 is the last chance for them?

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I mean, it has to be? Funding a studio for years with nothing to show for it is crazy.

 

[Luke88]

Just what was that robot hand in the picture they sent to Reggie ???

 

[Deleted member 10737]

Who else were they gonna give it to? It's not like Nintendo had many options.

Click to shrink...

they could just cancel it. i just don't buy the idea that they would give an already troubled project to someone else unless they were damn sure they'll get good results. cancelling it would have been better than risking another troubled development cycle.

 

[The Three]

There's still no explanation for that little robot hand waving at us...mocking us...

 

[Future Gazer]

they could just cancel it. i just don't buy the idea that they would give an already troubled project to someone else unless they were damn sure they'll get good results. cancelling it would have been better than risking another troubled development cycle.

Click to shrink...

They could cancel it, but that would pretty much be the nail in the coffin for the Metroid series. I think Nintendo is just praying that Retro doesn't fuck it up.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

they could just cancel it. i just don't buy the idea that they would give an already troubled project to someone else unless they were damn sure they'll get good results. cancelling it would have been better than risking another troubled development cycle.

Click to shrink...

They quite likely would have if they hadn't already promised it to the public.

There's a good chance this is Nintendo giving retro a last chance to actually make a game. "Just make something iterative on a series you used to do, or you're on support duty forever".

Studios that don't put out games for five+ years are studios that anyone else would have closed down, so they're already lucky in that regard.

 

[Jodast]

A small team at Retro would have been consulting on and/or co-developing Prime 4 the entire time, even if they weren't the primary developers.

My guess is that they were working on a game or two when Prime 4 started development, and with that games development struggling they've had to dedicate more and more staff over time to try and get it back on track, moving into more of a co-developer role. Probably just reached a point where there were so many staff being transferred to work on Prime 4 that Nintendo decided to outright give them the title to develop, and Retro decided to start fresh. Meanwhile anything else in development is either put on hold or just continuing with small teams.

 

[Forkball]

It seems like whatever they were working on after DKTF may never see the light of day. Was it the robot hand game? Where was that? Also what happened to the cancelled game Nintendo was supposedly reviving? AN E3 OF MYSTERIES.

 

[Knight in Shining Armani]

They never got a game off the ground and now they're doing MP4. It ain't rocket science.

 

[Glio]

Projects are canceled all the time, I do not understand the obsession with Retro. Shit happens.

 

[LinkStrikesBack]

A small team at Retro would have been consulting on and/or co-developing Prime 4 the entire time, even if they weren't the primary developers.

My guess is that they were working on a game or two when Prime 4 started development, and with that games development struggling they've had to dedicate more and more staff over time to try and get it back on track, moving into more of a co-developer role. Probably just reached a point where there were so many staff being transferred to work on Prime 4 that Nintendo decided to outright give them the title to develop, and Retro decided to start fresh. Meanwhile anything else in development is either put on hold or just continuing with small teams.

Click to shrink...

We were explicitly told shortly after prime 4 was announced that retro were not on the project. There's basically no reason to think that the situation you proposed happened between the mystery team and the project being handed over to retro at the start of this year.

 

[Deleted member 36622]

Right after Tropical Freeze they worked on a new project with Tanabe, in 2014 both Tanabe and Kelbaugh confirmed it, in 2015 during interviews about Federation Force, Tanabe said he didn't know what Retro Studios was working on (meaning he's no longer involved)

After that we've heard employees were leaving the studio in 2015, Retro had to hire a team and training them which takes time, and i believe that's what they've done. (oh and Tropical Freeze Switch port also)

They were working on a new project (we know from that writer who left) but i assume that is cancelled now that they have to focus on Metroid Prime 4.

It doesn't seem possible in 5 years but to be fair Retro Studios has always been like that: they nailed every single game they released but between the projects it has always been a mess on managing the studio.

- Before Metroid Prime

- After Corruption / before DKC Returns

And now it has been like since Tropical Freeze.

 

[IamFlying]

Why has Nintendo trusted them with MP4 if they can't get a project to completion all these years?

Click to shrink...

We don't even know if a game was cancelled or why, the cancellation could be completely unrelated to Retros work on this potential game.

Anyway we know that Retro worked together with other teams on a bunch of games, so someone at Nintendo decided to give them MP4 because they did good?

 

[lunanto]

Strings I guess it is harder to give up on an studio that has produced so many fantastic games...

 

[thomasmahler]

I'd guess they made a couple of prototype projects that Nintendo didn't greenlight for various reasons. Then Metroid Prime 4 didn't come together, so they just asked Retro to make that instead.

 

[Jodast]

We were explicitly told shortly after prime 4 was announced that retro were not on the project. There's basically no reason to think that the situation you proposed happened between the mystery team and the project being handed over to retro at the start of this year.

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Sure, which is why I said it was my guess.

Not that I really care to defend a guess in a thread full of guesses, but being told staff aren't working on it in 2017 doesn't mean staff weren't working on it by the time Retro took over, especially if the original team wasn't up to the task. But you're right in that I probably shouldn't have used co-develop from the beginning and instead just have had consultancy there (and I do think Retro would have had some input on the project at the beginning).

 

[TwoDelay]

they had a game (or two), it was cancelled and now their making mp4

 

[Dark Cloud]

Just what was that robot hand in the picture they sent to Reggie ???

Click to shrink...

That was most likely an inside joke.

 

[Deleted member 36622]

I mean, it has to be? Funding a studio for years with nothing to show for it is crazy.

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It's also possible they pitched ideas to Nintendo and they rejected them, in a recent interview Takahashi from Monolith Soft said Nintendo is a bit strict on these things.

 

[Prof Bathtub]

Projects are canceled all the time, I do not understand the obsession with Retro. Shit happens.

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People are very fixated on the studio, yet often a lot of them only seem to revere two of their games without caveats (Prime 1 and Tropical Freeze, though MP2 has its devotees.) If they had shown something, people would likely get irritated all over again since it wouldn't be "worth" the time in between game releases.

Anyway, we can only guess at what goes on at the studio, but that doesn't mean we have guess so much that whole narratives are created out of conjecture: "last chance before support studio hell" or "they must have done some work to remain in good graces."

 

[Asbsand]

They finished Metroid Prime 3 and there was a huge exodus of veterans around 2012 according to a number of claims on that infamous Glassdoor review site. They then reshaped and make the DK games and then token as everything Metroid Prime 4 is, when Nintendo saw what UNNAMED studio did was not up to snuff they said "Let's get Retro back, that'll get people excited!".

In other words. Don't believe in Metroid Prime 4 guys. You're setting yourself up for massive disappointment. This game has "bad management" written all over it so far.

 

[The Three]

What is the longest time any Nintendo studio has gone between games?

 

[Clov]

Retro's busy making a sequel to one of Nintendo's most beloved IPs.

Spoiler

The hints have been on their Twitter the whole time!

 

[Onix555]

I don't particularly like any of their games, but I think some people are too harsh in this thread.
Retro is about half the size of Monolith Soft and can only work at one game at a time.
Games these days are a lot bigger and more complex, so if something goes wrong thats years of work that either has to be reworked or scrapped; not out of the ordinary.
Overall, I don't see anything wrong with the studio. And for every resource they don't use, an extra gets sent to Monolith so i'm fine with it.

 

[Sgt. Demblant]

It's a bit worrying / disheartening to think that they probably had several cancelled projects. I imagine they were cancelled for a reason, but still.
I guess the same thing happened before Metroid Prime 1 so maybe this is just history repeating itself.

 

[Deleted member 9035]

They completed two projects but lost everything in a fire after an office barbecue got out of hand.

 

[Linkage76]

Do we know whatever happened to the game that Alexander Brandon was working on with Retro?

There was a Factbook post by him about working on a game with them back in May 2017. I wonder if that's canceled.

 

[DiK4]

Retro begins work on their new game in 2014.

Moves project to Switch in 2016.

Prime 4 greenlit in 2017. Retro is deep in development of their new game when Nintendo asks Retro to port Tropical Freeze to Switch, remaster Metroid Prime Trilogy as well as provide some basic support for Metroid Prime 4.

This slowes down development of their current game. Upon Tropical Freeze's Switch completion in 2018 they start working on a protoype for Prime 4 while finishing Trilogy HD due to rumblings of problems with the game at Namco.

They pitch Prime 4 in fall 2018. Nintendo thinks about it. Decides to restart development in December. Asks Retro to double down on Trilogy HD and make it more than a simple remaster and then finish polishing their current game while starting developing on Prime 4.


Pure speculation and blind faith, but I believe their game was/is a 3D action adventure DK game. If nothing is shown by 2020 I will unfortunately have to believe their game... Was cancelled. :(

 

[Schreckweg 5000]

Isn't this "Retro worked on Labo" just a joke? Or is there a real source for that claim?

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Christopher Dring claims he has heard that they worked on some non-gaming related project.

Him and the rest of the internet assumed Labo.

Retro is not once mentioned in relation to Labo, neither in the credits nor otherwise.

Its a urban myth basically, kept alive by forums.

They finished Metroid Prime 3 and there was a huge exodus of veterans around 2012 according to a number of claims on that infamous Glassdoor review site. They then reshaped and make the DK games and then token as everything Metroid Prime 4 is, when Nintendo saw what UNNAMED studio did was not up to snuff they said "Let's get Retro back, that'll get people excited!".

In other words. Don't believe in Metroid Prime 4 guys. You're setting yourself up for massive disappointment. This game has "bad management" written all over it so far.

Click to shrink...

That conclusion is quite the asspull

 

[Strings]

It's also possible they pitches ideas to Nintendo rejected them, in a recent interview Takahashi from Monolith Soft said Nintendo is a bit strict on these things.

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Ofc. I'd imagine Nintendo is especially strict about that kind of stuff.

 

[Magicmilner]

I think Retro worked on the often rumoured Metroid Prime Trilogy HD and would have been releasing this year had it not been for MP4 being rebooted.

Likely we'll see MPT HD next year with MP4 coming in 2021.