Metroid Prime fans are a patient lot, and after almost a decade of waiting, 2025 looks like it’ll be their year. Nintendo confirmed that this year will be a big one, as not only will the Switch 2 console launch, but the long-in-development Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be one of several tentpole games released in 2025 as well.
While it doesn’t have an exact date yet. Nintendo did confirm in the financial results for the first nine months of its latest fiscal year that Metroid Prime 4 is one of the big four first-party 2025 releases, alongside the recently released Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, Xenoblade Chronicles X on March 20, and Pokemon Legends Z-A.
Metroid Prime 4 was announced for Switch all the way back at E3 2017, but beyond that, there was nothing but radio silence surrounding the game. In 2019, Nintendo announced that it had rebooted development on the game as it had not reached the standards the publisher wanted from it. This means the game will likely be backward-compatible with the Switch 2, although it’s unclear if there’ll be a native Switch 2 version available for purchase.
After several more years of silence–with the void being temporarily filled with Metroid Dread and Metroid Prime Remastered–the game re-emerged in Summer 2024 with a brand-new teaser trailer. There’s still a lot that we don’t know about Metroid Prime 4, but as we get closer to its eventual release, it’s highly likely that Nintendo will start to drop a few trailers detailing what fans can expect when they step back into Samus Aran’s power-armor.
In related news, Nintendo just broke a 13-year record with its Switch console sales figures and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continues to be a major commercial hit for the company. It hasn’t been all good news for Nintendo, as the company did confirm that Switch hardware and software sales were “below expectations” and this has led to the company lowering its sales predictions. Nintendo expects Switch console sales to reach 11 million–down from its previous forecast of 12.5 million sales–for its current fiscal year ending on March 31, 2025.