The development of Metroid Prime 4 has been a little bit of a mess for quite a while. The game was initially announced during the E3 in 2017, and it was in January of 2019 that Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinya Takahashi revealed that the game was being restarted from scratch.
It was initially unknown which studio was it that was working on Metroid Prime 4, but the announcement made by Takahashi revealed that Retro Studios would be taking over the project from then on out, which is the same studio that had worked on the first three entries in Metroid Prime series.
Ever since Retro Studios has been in charge of the project, we've had little updates regarding the game itself. Most of the information we have is about developers joining the team, but we have absolutely no idea exactly how far into the game's development the team currently is.
New information seems to suggest that Metroid Prime 4 may still be quite far away from releasing for the Nintendo Switch, as Retro Studios has recently revealed that they are currently looking for a Lead Producer to jin them in the development of the highly anticipated title.
A Lead Producer is the person who's in charge of making everything work within the game's development itself, and the fact that Retro Studios is just now looking for one can mean a few things; the most likely one being that the previous Lead producer, whoever it may have been, is no longer working on the game.
It is unlikely that Metroid Prime 4's development has gotten this far without a Lead Producer. If this was the case, however, it means that the game is still in very, and we mean very early stages of development; then again, this is the unlikely choice.
The latest official update we got from the developer was the announcement that Retro Studios was working on the game, and it's been over a year and a half since that happened. Maybe there really isn't anything to report, but an official update would be greatly appreciated by fans of the series.
Now, the good news is that, updates or not, the fact that Retro Studios are still hiring people to work on Metroid Prime 4 means that the game hasn't been cancelled. While it may not be the update that players would want, it is still reassuring to know that the game is still a thing.