Nintendo's Retro Studios is reportedly planning to expand its headquarters, in order to keep growing as a developer — which will allow them to speed up development of some of their upcoming projects such as the long-delayed, and highly anticipated Metroid Prime 4.
Video Games Chronicle reports that Retro Studios will be investing the sum of $530,000 USD in order to expand its headquarters in Austin, Texas. According to the report, this investment will go into building out 40,000 square feet of office space, and this expansion is expected to be completed by next summer.
As mentioned above, Retro Studios is currently, and actively hiring staff to work on Metroid Prime 4, and a bigger base of operations will definitely allow them to not only work on the long-awazited project but also on maybe something else simultaneously.
The latest game that Retro Studios officially worked on was the critically acclaimed Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze — which released for the Nintendo Wii U in 2014 for the series' 20th anniversary — but we haven't really heard anything about other projects since; except for Metroid Prime 4, of course.
Before Retro Studios joined the development of Metroid Prime 4 — and restarted it from scratch, actually — they were working on a project that was never really revealed. It was always assumed that it was either a brand-new intellectual property, another Donkey Kong Country title, or even a Star Fox series revival in the form of a racing game. No, really.
Whatever the case, it is exciting to know that Retro Studios — the same developer that has successfully managed to revive the Metroid and Donkey Kong Country series — will now be expanding. Chances are that they didn't ditch their previous project, and this expansion could help them work on both Metroid Prime 4 and whatever it is that this unnamed project was.