Metroid Prime 4 & Pokémon Slated For 2018
During last week’s E3, Venturebeat sat down with Charlie Scibetta from Nintendo to discuss a wide variety of topics. There’s a lot of good content in that interview, but the one thing that caught our eyes was the 2018 talk. Nintendo seemingly confirms that Metroid Prime 4 and the new Pokémon RPG are coming to Switch before the end of next year. Both were announced during Nintendo’s Spotlight video, but with no “2018” attached to either of them many assumed they would probably come in 2019.
Indeed, the upcoming Pokémon game was shown without a logo or a name. They mentioned that “Game Freak has begun developing a core RPG Pokémon title on the Nintendo Switch. It may not release for more than a year”. Of course, this leaves fall of 2018 open, and perhaps they’ll be able to squeeze that out for a holiday 2018 release.
Metroid Prime 4 is more elusive because we still don’t know who is developing the new game. All bets were on Retro Studios, since they’ve been radio silent since Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze released back in early 2014. We’ve since learned that Retro isn’t working on the game, so we have no idea how long it’s actually been in development. Given the fact that Nintendo was quite fine showing off the upcoming Kirby and Yoshi games – both slated for 2018 – we figured that Metroid Prime 4 wasn’t in a showable state and that it could be further off. Now, Mr. Scibetta says it’s a 2018 release, so maybe Nintendo just didn’t feel it was the right time to show off gameplay footage. Here’s his exact statement:
GamesBeat: For the rest of the year, what’s the big message? Obviously Mario, but is there anything else?
Charlie Scibetta: Games. If you want to be able to play games and not have a dry spell between any of the big launches, we think Nintendo Switch is a good place to be. We have a nice drumbeat of first and third party. You’ll never have to wait long.
Just as you get through a game and you’re starting to put your head up, put the periscope out to see what else is out there, hopefully we’ll have something right there for you. We’ve announced a nice lineup through this year, and next year we have some big games coming with Metroid 4. 2018 will be around Metroid, Kirby, Yoshi, new Pokemon game has been announced. We feel good about the lineup for this year and beyond.
If Metroid Prime 4 does indeed make a 2018 launch, we’re beyond excited. It’s one of our most anticipated games for the Switch and we’re eager to see it in action!
[Source: Venturebeat]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
