Metroid is 40 years old but what kind of future is Nintendo building for it?

Metroid Ravenous looks an awful lot like Metroid Dread, which is a good and a bad thing (Nintendo) In the wake of Metroid Ravenous’ announcement, GameCentral looks at the current state of the franchise, its importance to Nintendo, and its uncertain future. Did you know Metroid turned 40 this year? We wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t since while Nintendo has proudly boasted about the longevity of The Legend Of Zelda, it’s had nothing to say about Metroid hitting the same milestone. That’s not surprising, given that Zelda has exploded in popularity thanks to Breath Of The Wild, while Metroid remains more of a prestige series; one whose influence dwarfs its actual sales performance. Metroid Dread is the best selling game in the series at 3.07 million units, which is not even close to the heights of Breath Of The Wild’s 34.06 million sales or Tears Of The Kingdom’s 22.71 million. And yet by the time the Nintendo Switch 2 turns two years old, it will already have played host to two Metroid games, in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond and the recently announced Metroid Ravenous. Why they’ve opted to make Metroid a priority now of all times is hard to say, but then understanding Nintendo has never been an easy task. Looking back, Nintendo has entered a steady cadence of Metroid releases since Metroid Dread in 2021. There was the excellent Metroid Prime remaster in 2023, the not-so-excellent Metroid Prime 4 in 2025, and now Metroid Ravenous in 2027. A welcome cycle compared to the seven year gap between Metroid: Other M and the Metroid 2 remake (there was the Federation Force spin-off in 2016 but nobody counts that.) And with Metroid Ravenous confirmed to be coming from Dread developer MercurySteam, that game’s success was clearly enough incentive for the studio to be put to work on a sequel as early as 2023, if not earlier. Expert, exclusive gaming analysis Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Although that also means it was greenlit before Nintendo knew what a critical and commerical disappointment Metroid Prime 4 would be, so Ravenous’ release is not a reaction to that game’s failure. Two Metroid games coming out two winters in a row is peculiar but it doesn’t necessarily mean Nintendo’s looking to push Samus into the spotlight and turn Metroid into a household name. If it was, you’d think the company would make a bigger deal of the series’ 40th birthday or do what it did with Donkey Kong and announce a big and bold reinvention of the formula. Metroid Ravenous wasn’t even the big closer to the last Nintendo Direct, as that honour was given to next year’s Kirby And The World Beyond. Nintendo even teased big plans for Kirby’s 35th anniversary, which is a perfect demonstration of where Metroid sits in Nintendo’s hierarchy. Plus, while it does look very good, Ravenous is clearly very similar to Dread. Samus does boast a new power that lets her feed on her enemies, but there’s no hint of any sort of evolution of the Metroid formula. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Some of Nintendo’s most lauded games (The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Super Mario Galaxy 2) rely heavily on reused assets and keeping things familiar helps ensure fans of what came before stick around. However, Zelda and Mario have reinvented themselves many times in the past, whereas the only substantial deviation from the Metroid formula has been Metroid Prime, which is giving every sign of now having run its course. Prime 4 isn’t a bad game, but it’s in an awkward spot where it’s not Metroid enough for its core audience, but too Metroid for casual newcomers. A Nintendo rep did say it sold over a million units, but this had to be dragged out of the company after it omitted any sales figures from its fiscal report. And considering that figure is a combination of Switch 1 and Switch 2 sales, that means neither version did especially well. Prime 4 did play around with the sub-series’ formula but none of the changes went down well, while some of them, like the obnoxious band of ally characters, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the series’ appeal. You have to imagine Nintendo won’t be as quick to greenlight Metroid Prime 5 giving how frosty its reception was, so perhaps the best (or even only) way for Metroid to evolve is to try at a new type of 3D game. A third person adventure seems the obvious route. It’d have to be radically different to the awful Other M but Batman: Arkham Asylum was essentially a Metroidvania and that proved the formula could work in third person over17 years ago. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be open world (and Prime 4’s incredibly boring crack at one is bound to make people hesitant to the idea), but translating the Metroid formula into 3D seems like the most obvious recourse. Especially when Nintendo has pulled this off already with Super Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, and now Kirby. The alternative is for Metroid to remain a 2D series forever, but that’d be an admission by Nintendo that the formula has nowhere else to go. Maybe Metroid being a modest hit it can fall back on in-between bigger, more expensive projects is enough for the company but that’s not usually the attitude they take. The good news is that Ravenous’ reveal trailer quickly accrued more views than Dread’s announcement on both the UK and American Nintendo YouTube channels, and it’s reported that Dread shot to the top of the Switch 1’s eShop sales charts in the US, meaning it’s enjoying a surge of new fans looking to get their fix while they wait for the new game. A lot of that could be down to the presentation rather than the core gameplay. Samus was already aura farming hard in Dread and Ravenous is doubling down on that, particularly regarding her new energy absorption ability that, coupled with the title, has some perceiving her as incredibly… voracious. Or maybe it’s just the fact that she actually speaks this time. Samus as a character has evolved quite a bit in the past 40 years, both emotionally and physically, given she’s now become the titular Metroid. It would be very disappointing if the series itself never followed suit. Metroid was a trendsetter one and it can be one again, but only if it continues to evolve. We’re not opposed to a Metroid Prime 5… as long as it doesn’t repeat Metroid Prime 4’s mistakes (Nintendo) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. 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