Metroid not likely on Wii U

So, Kensuke Tanabe spoke with Eurogamer and tipped us on whether Metroid will be hitting the Wii U. In short: It's probably not.

"If we started for Wii U now, it would likely take three years or so. So it would likely now be on Nintendo's NX console,"

"Truth be told, making HD games takes a lot of time and resources," Tanabe added when asked why Nintendo had not made a Metroid Prime for Wii U. "I haven't been able to collect a team or the resources to do it."

My reaction is mixed. I'd love to have Metroid on the Wii U, but I figure it will be a better game if made on stronger hardware with fewer corners to cut.

Source

Edit: Forgot to post the source article

And the bad news from Nintendo about the Wii U keeps pouring in. It's almost comical at this point, lol.

Not likely.... more like "not at all".

I have a feeling the NX is going to bomb though, after how short lived the U seems to be at this point I wouldn't want to invest in their next machine

kinda guess it they will rest Metroid this gen..this pretty much confirms Wii U getting abandoned...so Zelda U will be its last hurrah. :P

Not too surprising if true, Metroid was never a strong Nintendo seller anyway.

Metroid Prime

2.82 million

Metroid Prime 2

1.33 million

Metroid Prime 3

1.79 million

Metroid Prime Trilogy

.61 million

Metroid Prime other M

1.31 million

Thats a total of 7.86 million copies sold.

Pretty sure Metroid was a lost for Nintendo. I hear yall screaming for Metroid, but money talks, bullshat walks.

It makes no sense for them to make and invest on a big metroid game on the U. They want to move on quickly and make these games for a more succesful home console with a bigger install base, and i am all for it no reason to keep wishing for games on the failure, its done and N has made it clear.

That's a shame but if we get it for the NX instead, take time to make a great version, it'll be worth it. Whether it will be more like the SNES style as opposed to the GC (FPS) style though will be interesting to see...

Yeah.... :(

True and true. While I have no doubts that Retro would be able to pull off a technically impressive Metroid on Wii U, I understand the decision. It sucks, but I get it. The Wii U is a dud, Nintendo knows it, and they need to move on from it.

I'd love to see a return to the Prime, first person style. I think an SNES style Metroid would be a great fit for a handheld, though.

Ughh...they should have started 3 years then! Or start now... because in 3 years i'm sure the NX will be in trouble as well.

So, like the N64, Wii U misses a Metroid. Called this (well, sorta)!

Metroid deserves the best, and that's not the Wii U :p

I want the next game to wow us like Prime did on the cube.

Wow, so now even Ninetndo franchises are skipping the Wii-U. smh

Agreed. Prime blew me away on the Gamecube. Those games have aged extremely well. I'm replaying the Prime trilogy on the Wii U. I'm half way through Echos. Everything from the art style to gameplay has held up.

@mesome713: Glad someone brought up the numbers here (although I didn't know that Other M had actually reached a million units sold, so I may have to look for updated numbers myself... lol). There's really no reason to invest in a new Metroid game unless it can be proven that the sales numbers will actually suffice, and the Wii U is NOT the platform where Metroid is going to have a good chance of finding success. The fact that not a single Metroid game has even sold 3 million copies worldwide, it only raises the question why Nintendo should keep the series a priority at all, especially since any Metroid game that has hopes of meeting fan expectations is going to demand a larger-than-normal developing budget for Nintendo with little chance at make a solid return on that investment.

In my opinion, this is a series that is in major need of a reinvention, but since fans cling so closely to the likes of Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, it's going to be incredibly tough to take chances while enticing the niche but important following the stay onboard with the concept (just look at Other M and Federation Force, for examples). Metroid's best quality is the diversity it brings to Nintendo's IP portfolio, but it has long been a series that has been given more credit than it actually warrants from a usefulness perspective.

FFS nintendo you suck at your jobs.

@Chozofication: What this guy said.

Why make a huge game like Metroid for a console that's been on the market for almost 3 years and has just barely crossed 10 million in sales? It makes more sense if it's in the launch window for Nintendo's NX.

The Metroid series also missed the Nintendo 64. So not having a Metroid game on Wii U could be forgiven if the Nintendo NX features a Metroid game at launch. Hopefully The series will return and fix everything that went wrong with the last installment Metroid Other M

So hopefully NX will have a great Metroid game.

Then the WiiU is done for me. No more money is going into it.

A few issues should be discussed that were not present in the brief reply surrounding sales.

1.) Plenty of Metroid titles were not even mentioned so we might want to check the sales numbers of those as well. No Metroid discussion is complete w/o talking about S.M., Fusion, Zero Mission, etc..,

2.) MPT has low sales numbers for reasons that have nothing to do with gamers not wanting it.

3.) The importance of sales numbers is bunk IMO. The GCN didn't sell well yet there were two Prime's released. Even when sales weren't through the stratosphere another was still made for the Wii. Nintendo realizes it isn't worth the time and money to release a game on a dying system this late into the fray. Certainly there had to have been discussions, years ago, about making an installment for the Wii U but we've seen how games have been received on this console. Really it goes beyond just how many copies of game X were sold. I'm sure figures are looked at but not as the biggest factor in green lighting a game.

This exactly.

LOL Yeah and how hard was it to climb back down the beanstalk with that Golden Egg?

Metroid Other M must have hurt Nintendo's confidence in the series.

@Solaryellow:

1. I'll just leave this here...:

http://nintendoeverything.com/nintendo-sales-data-from-1983-to-2014/

I'll save you some trouble, though. At 2.78 million copies sold, the first Prime is at the top of the Metroid list, followed closely by... the ORIGINAL Metroid at 2.73 million. Considering that the series hasn't grown in all of these years, regardless of platform, it's not hard to conclude that the series, despite its vocal fanbase, isn't one that garners a lot of outside attention as it is currently presented.

2. Fair point. Trilogy sold as well as it was going to sell given Nintendo's supply, but let's not make it look like it was going to fly off store shelves had Nintendo replenished its stock at retail either.

3. I think sales are quite relevant to this discussion. If Metroid was as big commercially as it is in hype-generation, Nintendo wouldn't hesitate to make a Wii U installment a priority, much like it does with Super Mario and Super Smash Bros. I would go into details, but the timing is bad atm. Just stay tuned. lol

@Madmangamer364:

Those charts are interesting to be sure and I went looking not for Metroid sales numbers but Pikmin believe it or not. Why I looked for Pikmin 2 is because part 3 was one of the first "big" games released for the Wii U back in the summer of 2013 and it shows me back in the infancy of the console Nintendo seemed more inclined to take risks especially with niche franchises. According to the charts, Pikmin 2 sold 1.11 million on the GCN and if I recall correctly, a true sequel was never released on the WIi but we did get some with different controls. Clearly, sales figures were not a determining factor whether or not part 3 was released. Metroid is niche. Super Mario Anything is not but is a staple on any Nintendo system. A new Metroid game meeting the standards of fans would likely be a long and tedious task. What I believe is that Nintendo thought each big game released would reverse the fortunes of the console but that never happened. Even if Corruption sold 8 million, we wouldn't see one this late in the game when the console is a plug's pull away from death.

@Solaryellow: Pikmin is pretty steady though it has always sold over that 1 million mark, also Metroid has lost some people. But i agree that its more than just sales. I think it also has to do with how the fans are. The most famous Metroid creator also just so happens to be the most hated Metroid guy. Then we have what happened with the original Metroid team splitting up some. Tanabe has taken over but it seems he hasnt won fans trust yet either. I think Tanabe wants to create a Metroid Prime game first and let fans see it, and than do another Metroid Prime with Samus.

There has to be more to the story, i know a lot of legends worked together on the Metroid games, so i guess it cost a lot of time and money to have that many together. Then on Metroid Prime 2 some left but they still looked to have a big team. Then on final Metroid game Tanabe was the main producer on the game. I think it was just a bunch of things that piled up and since the game was not to big in Japan, maybe Nintendo wanted to use the 3DS Metroid Prime game to build hype in Japan and then release a big budget one.

Its a great topic to discuss and i feel we will all be discussing for some time as we learn and discover more info.

Yup & it was their (Nintendo) guy that was in charge of it, so it must have been a big blow....the biggest problem is Sakamoto won't admit he screwed up instead blaming consumers. :P

I think those charts are pure gold when it comes to evaluating Nintendo, its history, and the strength of its systems and franchises. The numbers don't tell the whole story, but they certainly tell more about Nintendo than most message board discussions or news articles in this day and age. I could go on, but I'd be sounding like a fanboy of sales charts or something. :P

I don't find Pikmin 3's release to relate much to Metroid's status. While both franchises are indeed niche, the Pikmin series gets the benefit of the doubt on Wii U because it didn't get an installment on the Wii to gauge its popularity on a very successful platform. It's also likely that Pikmin 3 wasn't anywhere near as costly as a full-scale Metroid game would have been on the Wii U, which I suspect you'll find agreement with. Pikmin may not be a multi-million selling series, but leading up to Pikmin 3, it had shown consistency with the audience that it had gained, which isn't exactly the same story with Metroid.

Beyond that, I can agree with what you're saying... minus the "if Corruption sold 8 million" part; if that had actually happened, Nintendo would have been salivating to work on the new Metroid installment the moment production of the Wii U was finished and this discussion wouldn't even exist right now. Let's also be mindful of the fact that the Wii U would only be the second long-running Nintendo platform that didn't get a new Metroid installment in some form, so the series is definitely a staple in terms of presence. I'm not saying the only reason that Metroid isn't hitting the Wii U has to do with sales, but I still find its lack of growth and inconsistent commercial viability to be a major issue for Nintendo now and moving ahead to future systems. The problem is... what do you do with a series that is stuck between very specific expectations from a passionate but small fanbase and great disinterest from the rest of the gaming market?

@Madmangamer364:

Pikmin 3 on the Wii U was a rather unorthodox choice for one of the first big releases of the console. Prior sales were not amazing nor anything that would justify picking such a niche title over a franchise that is more widely known such as Metroid. Depending on what approach Nintendo took, the costs and time to develop one might not have been as outrageous as a full on Prime 4 or such. Whatever the case, Nintendo bet on Olimar over Samus and it looks like a bust. Looking and playing P3 does not make me think it was devoid of work, having a lot actually. Cost wise I'm certain it took an ample amount of resources. Pikmin, on the Wii, had two installments even if they were just older games with new controls. If sales were a determining factor, P3 shouldn't have been made.....at least on the Wii U. DLC was even offered and I'm comfortable to say the game didn't burn down the charts.

I think DK: Tropical Freeze scared Nintendo from allowing Retro to make prime 4. DK dominated on the Wii and flopped horribly on the U, so imagine just how bad metroid would sell given that it flopped on the Wii.

@status:Tropical Freeze did over a million on struggling hardware, I would say it did quite well for itself. By the end of the systems lifetime it will probably do near 2 million. As far as Metroid goes, the fanbase and the media, deemed the series dead after Other M. The Prime series never set the world on fire sales wise, so what reason would they have to keep running the series out there? Perhaps if people didn't throw a hissy over Samus attempting to have some semblance of a character, maybe we would be seeing a new game in the series. Other M was an attempt to bring back 2D Metroid with a little modernized twist and it was met with pure wrath, that is what killed the series.

@Sepewrath: I don't believe Tropical Freeze got even close to 500,000 sales, let alone a million.

@status: I dont think Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze flopped, its already sold over 1 million copies in just over a year. The Wii game is still selling good in stores, im sure Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze will still sell 5 years from now also. Donkey Kong is a hard game, so it turns a bunch of people off. I know a few who bought it on Wii thinking is was an easy game and gave up on it. This was bound to happen with a customer install base of 100 million.

But yeah, if Metroid was declining on Wii, it would have probably sold poor on Wii U also because of the smaller install base.

I'm not getting an NX if they can't properly support the Wii U.

yup. I waited until smash and kart came out for Wii U. Looks like this time I'm going to wait for Smash, Kart, Zelda, and Metroid first to make sure I don't get short changed.

lol at you guys....a console is just a toy....not an investment.... you get a few games on it and then move on to the next one.

anyway i think nx is a 3Ds successor.

Alright, so, if the NX were to only get Super Mario, Pikmin, and absolutely nothing else, you would be okay with that because it's just a toy and not an investment, right? According to you, it doesn't matter how much support it gets. You could get a paperweight and be perfectly fine with it.

thats right...imposiible but in theory 1 game alone would suffice.

just buy another console if you want more games. everyone has at least 2 systems now a days and that includes PC.