[saghm]

> Nintendo also shipped Metroid Prime 4, with massive delays and unsatisfied customers, following the same "interactive Hollywood" philosophy which disappointed Metroid fans.

I'm not convinced that Metroid at least really is a great data point for "Nintendo is ruining things in-house". From Wikipedia[1]:

> Nintendo announced Metroid Prime 4 with a teaser trailer during the Nintendo Direct presentation at E3 2017, and announced that Retro Studios, who developed the previous main Prime games, would not be involved.[15][16] In February 2018, Eurogamer reported that Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore.

> In January 2019, the Nintendo EPD manager Shinya Takahashi announced that development had restarted under Retro with Tanabe remaining as producer. Takahashi said the previous studio had not met Nintendo's standards and that the decision to restart was not taken lightly.[21] Shortly after, Nintendo reevaluated Prime 4 after noticing changing attitudes towards open-world games, but maintained the direction as the development was already taking longer than planned. The team ignored new developments in action and shooting games to prioritize the adventure elements.

There's a perspective where this is almost the exact opposite of the problem being discussed about Microsoft. They chose to let it get developed externally, suffered delays, and by the time they moved it back in-house, the ecosystem had moved from under them. They probably could have chosen to rethink everything and delay it further, but they also arguably could have avoided having to make that call by keeping it in-house and letting the studio who made the previous entries work on it from the start and landing it in time that the original vision still fit what people wanted.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroid_Prime_4:_Beyond#Develo...

[manytimesaway]

My point wasn't about Nintendo ruining things in-house rather than them following the exact same trends than Sony & Microsoft, only a few years late.

MP4 is what OP was talking about, an "interactive Hollywood" experience that betrays previous Metroids, adds discutable open-world design cues, and locks features behind $30 figures.

[ragequittah]

Metroid has always been a very (very) small series in the grand scheme of Nintendo. If they screw up the next Zelda or Mario they might be in trouble. But they also seem to have actual magicians work on those games.

[SllX]

Metroid is a secondary or tertiary IP, and the Metroid Prime subseries has always had more smoke online than its sale figures would ever suggest, with only the original on Gamecube selling north of 2 million, and it was a pack-in title.

[rawbot]

Metroid Prime wasn't a pack-in title. In fact, the bundles that did offer it bundled were short-lived.

[SllX]

That’s what a pack-in title is. I had one of those GameCubes, and I ended up trading in the packed-in Metroid Prime to EB Games for like $5 in store credit cuz I didn’t like the game.

[rawbot]

I would say pack-in title would refer to a bundle that was active for a substantial time, like Wii Sports on the Wii. The Metroid Prime bundle was just active during the release of the game, 3 years after it launched.

[SllX]

You are trying to split hairs on synonymous terminology in an effort to correct me when my original statement was already correct, and doubling down. Why?

Call it a bundle if you like, but the game itself was a packed-in the box and sold as an item with the GameCube, i.e. a pack-in.

[weberer]

Prime 4 was a fine game, except for the MacKenzie character who would never shut the hell up. It was like having a redditor in your ear for 10 hours. Absolutely insufferable. If they would have just removed him and worked on the desert hub world a bit more, it probably would have been 2025's game of the year.

[Apocryphon]

This isn't the first time Nintendo has outsourced a disappointing Metroid game, if Other M is any indication. Remains to be seen if this is part of a larger trend for that company.

[orloffm]

But Dread was wonderful, so if this outsourcing produced even one such a game, it was worth it after all.

[philistine]

Metroid has more duds than hits. Metroid Prime 4 is par for the course for the franchise.