Despite the fourteen year long absence, Metroid Prime remains a beloved piece of Nintendo history by many in the gaming community. Known as the game series that brought Metroid into 3D and put Retro Studios on the map, Metroid Prime changed up the franchise's formula in a major way. Although, the development of the first entry in the series was quite taxing and arduous for the development team as a result of crunch.
Crunch culture is an unfortunate and common by-product of video game development that forces game developers to work unreasonably long hours as a way to meet deadlines. Sadly, this practice has been going on for much longer than some may care to admit. Back in 2002, the development of the first Metroid Prime required Retro Studios to work under crunch conditions for nine months. Though, according to one former Retro Studios employee, Nintendo played a pivotal role in massively downsizing the amount of crunch time.
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In a recent episode of the Kiwi Talkz podcast on YouTube, Mike Wikan, a former senior game designer at Retro Studios discussed how Nintendo helped to permanently reduce the amount of crunch needed to produce future installments in the Metroid Prime series. Following Nintendo's acquisition of Retro Studios, Wikan and his peers were given new leadership in the form of Michael Kelbaugh. To this day, Kelbaugh remains the President and CEO of Retro Studios and greatly reduced the amount of crunch needed on any future project, like Donkey Kong Country Returns.
Wikan did mention that crunch still occurred during the development of Metroid Prime 2, but it was not nearly to the extent that it was when Retro Studios wasn't owned by Nintendo. It's amazing how quickly the situation improved, considering that Wikan and several of his peers were thinking about leaving the studio. Given the fact that last year, Nintendo invested half a million dollars into Retro Studios, it's clear that Nintendo has great faith in the developer's abilities.
While Wikan expressed excitement and confidence in Metroid Prime 4, it's impossible to know when the gaming community can expect to get a glimpse of the game. The game was announced during E3 2017 and since then, there has yet to be any sort of update or follow-up trailer four years after Metroid Prime 4's initial announcement.
Considering that Metroid Dread was originally supposed to be a Nintendo DS game and is now releasing on Nintendo Switch several years after the DS's discontinuation, it's possible that Metroid Prime fans might be waiting quite a while longer before Nintendo is ready to give a substantial update to the game's development. With any luck, new information regarding Metroid Prime 4 will surface in due time.