Much to people’s disappointment, Nintendo didn’t reveal a new Metroid game this year’s E3—excluding Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which is an experimental spin-off—and Eurogamer chatted with Metroid Prime producer Kensuke Tanabe about the future of the series.
“If we started [working on a new Metroid Prime] for Wii U now, it would likely take three years or so. So it would likely now be on Nintendo’s NX console,” he said. “It’s a long time but it would need to include a lot of content, which would take a lot of work on the development side.”
In terms of where he would like to take the story, Tanabe said he had a few ideas.
“The stories of Dark Samus and Phazon are done now,” Tanabe said. He then added that he would like to continue the story of Sylux pursuing Samus, which was a scene depicted at the end of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
“We’ve done a story based on the Hunters, and this time around we’re doing a story on the Galactic Federation,” Tanabe said, referring to Metroid Prime: Federation Force. “I would like to cross the two over in the future. And of course see a little more of Samus.”
Tanabe also said he can’t discuss plans for the Metroid franchise outside Metroid Prime, since he isn’t in charge of the non-Prime games, and so he couldn’t discuss if there were announcements coming on that front.
“I’m the producer of the Metroid Prime series, and [Metroid series co-creator] Yoshio Sakamoto is the one in charge of Metroid itself. I’m not sure when he’s planning on making such an announcement so I can’t speak for him.”
