A retailer has listed Metroid Prime 4's release date for October, which at once seems highly unlikely and exactly what Nintendo would do.
A French retailer has listed a new release date for Metroid Prime 4, and it seems extremely too good to be true. The sequel to the classic Retro Studios trilogy of first-person shooters, Metroid Prime 4 has had a longer than usual development cycle. Originally announced during Nintendo's digital showcase at E3 2017 with just a surprise logo, rumors flew about who was developing the title and what it would look like. Retro Studios was not initially on the project, but the game didn't come together, and Nintendo announced in January 2019 that the game was restarted under the franchise's original development team.
That was the final word about Metroid Prime 4, leaving fans with little to speculate on ever since. It's one of several high-profile Nintendo projects without much information out there. Nintendo announced a new Bayonetta during the same conference as Samus' return, but there hasn't been much of anything from that game since the logo presentation. Meanwhile, a new sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is in the works, but fans have only seen a brief cutscene from the game and don't even have an official title. With this year's E3 showcase canceled because of the global pandemic, Nintendo's current plans are even more under wraps than usual.
It's only in this situation that a release date of October 30, 2020, could be even under consideration for Metroid Prime 4. The Gaming Route saved a picture of a French retailer listing the game for October 30 of this year. That would mean that a theoretical future Nintendo Direct talking about the game would present its first gameplay footage just over two months from its release, a strategy that Nintendo has embraced only just recently with games like Paper Mario: The Origami King. It's not impossible, but it also seems very unlikely.
Then again, Nintendo wasn't clear about their definition of the word "restarted" when it delayed the Metroid Prime 4 project, so it's possible that Retro was salvaging work done on the previous version. If this is the case, the game could be completed much quicker than anticipated, meaning that a release in the very near future could be likely. On the flip side, if Retro is creating a whole new game from scratch, which may be more likely if they want the game to sync up with their past efforts, then expecting anything this year or even next could be foolhardy.
If Metroid Prime 4 is a big holiday surprise from Nintendo, it would make their Christmas plans a lot clearer. As of now, the rest of 2020 is absolutely empty for the makers of the Switch, although rumors persist of a Super Mario 3D collection to coincide with the plumber's 35th anniversary. A one-two punch of a beloved Gamecube revival and a set of remastered Mario games could definitely carry the holiday, and it'd also ride the trend of current nostalgia surrounding the early 2000s. Common knowledge states that it's always a mistake to try to predict what Nintendo is up to, but that plan certainly doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
Source: The Gaming Route
