A new job listing posted on Lensa, has revealed that Dylan Jobe will be joining Retro Studios as Director of Development in the long-awaited, long-delayed, and highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4, so things are now starting to look up for the project.
Dylan Jobe may not be a household name, but players may be familiar with his work, as he was the director of the multiplayer third-person shooter Warhawk — which is a game that was very well received when it was released as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2007.
For those of you wondering exactly what is Jobe's role as Director of Development, he's basically the person that will manage schedules, make sure that Metroid Prime 4 is a top quality product, and overall scope of the game; judging by his work on Warhawk, this is pretty great news.
Unfortunately, this doesn't tell us much else about the state of the project. Most, if not all, of the news we've gotten about Metroid Prime 4 come from job listings; absolutely no updates from the developers at Retro Studios themselves.
We do know, however, that Metroid Prime 4 is still in early stages of development, so it will be quite a while before we get some official news about it. A few weeks ago we found out that Retro Studios was just now looking for a Lead Producer; meaning that the game is, indeed, in very early stages of development.
Metroid Prime 4 was initially unveiled during Nintendo's E3 presentation back in 2017, but it was later revealed that the game was being pushed back indefinitely, and that Retro Studios would be developing the game from then on — which is the same studio that made the first three Metroid Prime games.
At this point, it is impossible to predict when we'll get official news about the project, but we do know that it won't be any time soon. Metroid Prime 4 has been in development hell for at least 3 years, but it seems like things are finally back on track.
Next year is the Metroid series' 35th anniversary, and even then I'd still be surprised if we got news about Metroid Prime 4 before 2022; you know, other than "we still can't provide any news about the project" kind of updates. With that said, Nintendo will probably surprise Metroid fans with other news next year; updates on Metroid Prime 4, however, are unlikely.