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Discussion Will Metroid Prime 4: Beyond be 70 dollars?

Will Metroid Prime 4: Beyond be 70 dollars?

  • Total voters
    163
  • This poll will close: .
Zelda is Nintendo's premier AAA franchise right now. Of course it would get the $70 treatment, because they know that people will buy it regardless. Metroid doesn't have that kind of pull yet, and might not ever, so they have to price it lower to get more non-fans interested. It's why Prime Remastered is $40, while the far more low-effort Donkey Kong Country Returns HD and Luigi's Mansion 2 HD are $60. Because they know that casual audiences will show up for a remaster of Donkey Kong or Luigi's Mansion, but not for Metroid. I think the next 3D Mario, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Smash Bros. will be $70 each, but not a franchise like Metroid which has yet to even cross the 5 million mark for a single entry, much less Miyamoto's 30 million "big hit" figure.
 
Unless it's absolutely huge (like 32GB cartridge huge), I expect $60

Maybe $70 for a Switch 2 version (with a $10 upgrade available if you have the Switch 1 version)
 
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ILikeFeet said:
If Nintendo didn't see thr profitability, I doubt they would have continued to make the game.

And MP4 was not in development for 7 years. The costs of the Bamco version aren't added onto Retro's version
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Prime 4 has been in development at Retro for 5.5 years and it looks like it's going to need another full year of development.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
If Nintendo didn't see thr profitability, I doubt they would have continued to make the game.

And MP4 was not in development for 7 years. The costs of the Bamco version aren't added onto Retro's version
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But it's not like they got that money back from the cancelled project lol.

They had to pay Bamco's employees that whole time. You can't just magically not consider that not part of the budget. They spent the money.

This project is highly likely to not be profitable. Or at least not very profitable at all. But I'd hazard a guess it will be a overall loss unless there is some miracle. Took too long. Remember they are paying AAA western developers too at retro.
 
VintoWin said:
You can't just magically not consider that not part of the budget.
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actually you can. companies write off dead projects all the time and new projects in their stead are budgeted according to what that living project needs, not to recoup what died

MP4 isn't expected to be a lost. MP4 from Bandai Namco was already a loss they accounted for years ago
 
Big doubt for this one. This game was a huge investment for them. It may not be a loss for the year it releases in. But for the project, based on its budget it likely won't be amazing.

We have no clue what Nintendo expects of this project. There's no proof.

Who knows how many copies they need to sell to break even.

These stories come up all the time in the gaming industry. Square Enix had trouble breaking even on many of their games that took way too long for example.
 
Meh. We're missing the point of what I'm trying to say so I'm done.

I'm not saying it spells doom for the franchise. But I'm not expecting over 5 million sales either. And I can't see that being super impressive for a game in development for this long.

It'd be a miracle if it sells a lot.
 
Triistan said:
It depends. They think the game could succeed in a way Metroid never managed to do? They could price it 70$.

Otherwise it’s 60$ for the switch version.

We still don’t know how they’ll price cross gen and switch 2 games though.
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There will be no cross gen Switch 2 games imo. The system is 100% backwards compatible, just leave Switch games on the shelves and keep them on eshop with a little tag they'll still sell and will look great, DLSS does the work for 4k and possibly add 60fps in certain games to adapt to bigger displays docked

If any these "leakers" at Bloomberg and IGN and shlt could tell me what they add to Switch 2 versions worth any time i would be floored 😂 especially Metroid Prime 4 which already looks gorgeous. Nintendo never messed with their previous artstyles at large scale before, why they would start now when they got the most software sales momentum they ever had into an Iterative Launch? I hope they don't and keep these resources focused on new games. Just my opinion though i'm probably wrong lol
 
VintoWin said:
Meh. We're missing the point of what I'm trying to say so I'm done.

I'm not saying it spells doom for the franchise. But I'm not expecting over 5 million sales either. And I can't see that being super impressive for a game in development for this long.

It'd be a miracle if it sells a lot.
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Why are we doomed before the game even has a release date? 😅 🙏 Metroid had never had an opportunity like this before, i have faith in the process they can convey to new buyers what's so special about these games. Nintendo is a different beast in Marketing than 2007, and social media can spread their plea far and our word of mouth wide. This is not comparable to anytime before, T T P 🙌🙌
 
ILikeFeet said:
actually you can. companies write off dead projects all the time and new projects in their stead are budgeted according to what that living project needs, not to recoup what died

MP4 isn't expected to be a lost. MP4 from Bandai Namco was already a loss they accounted for years ago
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I mean, in general, this is not correct at all as you need your projects to be profitable enough to at least make up for the cost of the projects itself and the tax reduced cost of all the projects you cancelled.

Obviously, as a whole, the cancellation of the original Prime 4 is not meaningful at all for Nintendo as they have so many ridiculously profitable projects, but I just don't like this thinking at all.

I would be pretty surprised if Prime 4 broke 2m copies so I would be pretty surprised if Prime 4 (just counting Retro's development) breaks even. If you're not adding open-world, multiplayer, good combat, or a good story, it's hard to see why this game will be more popular than the prior games as you cannot really casualize the series more while maintaining its core appeal unless you're doing a combat focused game like Dread (which Prime 4 clearly will not be). Prime 3 attempted this and it went very poorly financially.
 
It's still 6.5 years for Retro's project alone according to someone above.

I'm honestly completely blown away that people think Metroid Prime 4 is going to be a huge success.

The franchise historically is not a big seller.

People think this game is going to be the "Breath of the Wild" for Metroid.

There's no lack of nuance in my posts. I specifically go out of my way to cater to counterpoints and note detail and flaws in my own argument.

Yes, we don't know. But the evidence suggests, and history suggests that Metroid may not have the best situation.
 
Important to note that, regardless of the retail price, the game will remain with its launch price like... forever... like usually Nintendo games does, barring a rare sale here and there. So even if doesn't explode in the month of its release, it will keep selling and eventually pay its production, if we're working with so inflated hypothetical numbers.

Other M was a big, big production for Nintendo at the time too, and it was a massive failure also because it was quickly put in bargain bins on retailers. Nintendo not having a digital store where they control the price also didn't help.

Square and Sony games basically need that big first explosion of sales in the very first month or so, otherwise they're cooked.. because they quickly drop in price on retailers, so even if they end selling a couple of millions copies, they rarely achieve that production value.

I believe Prime 4 will do just fine as standard $60 game. Even if ends not being cross-gen, there will be interest of getting it to play after the next hardware is out.
 
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all this talk about "they spent x years on a project so it's expensive" reminds me of the first category in Mark Darrah's (of Bioware fame) recent video

a game took a long time, but was it actually "in development" for that length of time? because if it was in pre-production for 1-2 years and in the build phase for 3 years, you can't treat the costs as the same. doubly so when team sizes fluctuate between the different portions of development. it's not often we get definitive word on the work done like, for example, Bioshock Infinite. that game had literal shippable levels scrapped because Ken Levine changed his mind on the story. you read that shit and it's no surprise as to why Irrational got shut down despite the massive success. likewise, we heard about Luigi's Mansion 2/Next Level Games having a very long gestation period for a 3DS game, simply because Nintendo was ok with them doing a lot of prototyping and ideas development before getting to development proper. the two periods were no where near as expensive as each other, so we can't put a flat rate on them


 
VintoWin said:
It's still 6.5 years for Retro's project alone according to someone above.

I'm honestly completely blown away that people think Metroid Prime 4 is going to be a huge success.

The franchise historically is not a big seller.

People think this game is going to be the "Breath of the Wild" for Metroid.

There's no lack of nuance in my posts. I specifically go out of my way to cater to counterpoints and note detail and flaws in my own argument.

Yes, we don't know. But the evidence suggests, and history suggests that Metroid may not have the best situation.
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I don't know if anyone expects this to be the BotW of Metroid simply because they've shown nothing at all mechanically or otherwise to show that it would appeal to any audience except people who liked the prior Metroid Prime games.

I did see a lot of projections of 4-5m in sales which seems way too aggressive, the game just looks like it's not changing anything so I'm not sure why anyone should expect sales to change.
 
ILikeFeet said:
all this talk about "they spent x years on a project so it's expensive" reminds me of the first category in Mark Darrah's (of Bioware fame) recent video

a game took a long time, but was it actually "in development" for that length of time? because if it was in pre-production for 1-2 years and in the build phase for 3 years, you can't treat the costs as the same. doubly so when team sizes fluctuate between the different portions of development. it's not often we get definitive word on the work done like, for example, Bioshock Infinite. that game had literal shippable levels scrapped because Ken Levine changed his mind on the story. you read that shit and it's no surprise as to why Irrational got shut down despite the massive success.


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Okay, except Retro Studios had no projects they worked on since 2019 other than Prime Remastered. They weren't doing support work or DLC work and they were constantly at 150 or more employees since 2018. They've gone from 150 employees to 200 employees, this isn't a Remedy situation where only 20 people work on a game until the last two years. All of their 150+ employees were working exclusively on Prime Remastered or Prime 4 over the last 5.5 years and all of their 150+ employees were working on various cancelled games in the four years prior.

It's very easy to imagine like EPD Tokyo only had 20 people working on the newest 3D Mario from 2017 to 2022 with most of the EPD staff working on other EPD projects.... It wouldn't make any sense whatsoever for Retro to only have 20 or so people working on Prime Remastered+Prime 4 as none of their staff are credited literally anywhere else.

People bizarrely keep trying to imagine ways in which Prime 4 was not hyper expensive except all of these ways involve massive amounts of uncredited work which obviously did not happen.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Okay, except Retro Studios had no projects they worked on since 2019 other than Prime Remastered. They weren't doing support work or DLC work and they were constantly at 150 or more employees since 2018. They've gone from 150 employees to 200 employees, this isn't a Remedy situation where only 20 people work on a game until the last two years. All of their 150+ employees were working exclusively on Prime Remastered or Prime 4 over the last 5.5 years and all of their 150+ employees were working on various cancelled games in the four years prior.
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MP4 was announced to be in development at Retro in 2019. MP1 Remastered released in 2023. the most likely time scale was that at least 2019-2020, Retro was already working on MP1, then transitioned to MP4 in 2020-2021.

so their time is actually quite accounted for when we consider the period between Tropical Freeze Wii U and MP1 was TF Switch port and some failed project

ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
People bizarrely keep trying to imagine ways in which Prime 4 was not hyper expensive except all of these ways involve massive amounts of uncredited work which obviously did not happen.
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88aa5a9708fe10faa3529b8420fc07aa.jpg
 
ILikeFeet said:
MP4 was announced to be in development at Retro in 2019. MP1 Remastered released in 2023. the most likely time scale was that at least 2019-2020, Retro was already working on MP1, then transitioned to MP4 in 2020-2021.

so their time is actually quite accounted for when we consider the period between Tropical Freeze Wii U and MP1 was TF Switch port and some failed project


88aa5a9708fe10faa3529b8420fc07aa.jpg
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Okay, so the more employees and time you attribute to Prime Remastered, the more comically huge you assume the budget of Prime Remastered (a game Nintendo shadow dropped at a sharply reduced price due to their total lack of confidence in it) was. You get that, right.

If we assume 100% of Retro has been working on Prime 4 since September 2021 and almost none of their employees were working on prior, that’s still four years of full production work at 150-200 employees and extensive outsourcing.
 
I just think people are getting defensive about a franchise that is amazing. It's one of the best games ever made but historically it's not very successful. Which is a shame. Sales do not reflect quality in all cases.
 
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If Metroid Prime 4's development at Retro was truly a shitshow to the extent it will lose money on release hand over fist, Nintendo would have scrapped it by now and cut losses (again).

That people are wringing hands over the notion the game might need to be $70 just to make a profit is incredibly amateurish armchair analysis.
 
If Prime 4 has some massive, industry changing innovation that is hugely appealing to more mainstream audiences, then the game has a chance to do great.

But the footage shown just looked like a continuation of a gameplay style that probably has a ceiling of 2m. It’s honestly pretty weird seeing people watch that footage and then project 5m in sales.

I would guess Nintendo had modest expectations of its sales when it started development but simply expected it to be made way faster than it was.
 
...I want to go back to before Nintendo did that announcement trailer. Every Metroid discussion we've had since last Tuesday has been painful. I just want to go back to knowing nothing. If constant debates over whether or not the game is a safe sequel that is going to bomb is all that I have to look forward to from you all until September at the earliest, I wish to return to the bliss that is ignorance.
 
OctoSplattack said:
...I want to go back to before Nintendo did that announcement trailer. Every Metroid discussion we've had since last Tuesday has been painful. I just want to go back to knowing nothing. If constant debates over whether or not the game is a safe sequel that is going to bomb is all that I have to look forward to from you all until September at the earliest, I wish to return to the bliss that is ignorance.
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that time wasn't much better when you have the same bad actors as now
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I mean, in general, this is not correct at all as you need your projects to be profitable enough to at least make up for the cost of the projects itself and the tax reduced cost of all the projects you cancelled.

Obviously, as a whole, the cancellation of the original Prime 4 is not meaningful at all for Nintendo as they have so many ridiculously profitable projects, but I just don't like this thinking at all.

I would be pretty surprised if Prime 4 broke 2m copies so I would be pretty surprised if Prime 4 (just counting Retro's development) breaks even. If you're not adding open-world, multiplayer, good combat, or a good story, it's hard to see why this game will be more popular than the prior games as you cannot really casualize the series more while maintaining its core appeal unless you're doing a combat focused game like Dread (which Prime 4 clearly will not be). Prime 3 attempted this and it went very poorly financially.
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You would be very surprised because you took a 40 second trailer and made massive assumptions. Makes no sense. And then you just ignore the nuances of game development and its baffling.
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Okay, so the more employees and time you attribute to Prime Remastered, the more comically huge you assume the budget of Prime Remastered (a game Nintendo shadow dropped at a sharply reduced price due to their total lack of confidence in it) was. You get that, right.

If we assume 100% of Retro has been working on Prime 4 since September 2021 and almost none of their employees were working on prior, that’s still four years of full production work at 150-200 employees and extensive outsourcing.
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how do you know the outsourcing is extensive? And how much do you think 4 years of 200 employees cost?
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
People bizarrely keep trying to imagine ways in which Prime 4 was not hyper expensive except all of these ways involve massive amounts of uncredited work which obviously did not happen.
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what is hyper expensive?
 
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Hey, I'm trying to be nice and peaceful. Now I'm starting to feel you are being aggressive towards me. Maybe it wasn't defensiveness.

Can we please avoid toxicity in this thread. Thank you.

Yeah there are a few people that are going out of their way in some of threads I've seen to be particularly aggressive towards everyone and illicit negative feelings and drive the thread in bad directions.

Just stop please. It's annoying. Be civil. If you don't agree with Itwasmeanttobe19 or me then so be it. Don't need to insult our intelligence or act like we hate the franchise or that we're just armchair analyzing, when I specically went out of my way to say that it may be successful but history suggests that metroid isn't the best seller. That's it. It's not so complex and deep and wrought will ill will as some of you are suggesting. It's actually incredibly simple and basic and I'm saying hey maybe there's a chance this could be Metroid Prime's breakout hit, but as of now I'm betting no.
 
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4 years of development at 200 employees is like at minimum 4*200*(12)*($10000)=$96m pre-marketing.

Note that $10,000 per employee per month for US development was a pre-2020 estimate and post inflation, game development is probably more expensive now.

We will see if there's a major new innovation to attract people to the series. The only popular Metroid game in the last 21 years is a linear shooter/platformer with ridiculously good game-feel in Dread which probably won't be how Prime 4 can be popular.
 
A $70 price would probably just drive a bunch of the potential buyers to Prime Remastered instead.
jt155555 said:
If any these "leakers" at Bloomberg and IGN and shlt could tell me what they add to Switch 2 versions worth any time i would be floored 😂 especially Metroid Prime 4 which already looks gorgeous.
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I mean, you yourself brought up DLSS. Though I realise the two of us probably have completely different ideas on what "cross gen" even means on a backwards-compatible console: from my point of view, it's as much about the marketing as it is about the actual technical changes.
 
crazybenjamin said:
A $70 price would probably just drive a bunch of the potential buyers to Prime Remastered instead.

I mean, you yourself brought up DLSS. Though I realise the two of us probably have completely different ideas on what "cross gen" even means on a backwards-compatible console: from my point of view, it's as much about the marketing as it is about the actual technical changes.
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My bad btw i not laughing at you i respect your opinion entirely it just these bloomberg articles and game industry articles were annoying in 2023, now it's 2024 where's my switch 2 VGC and Eurogamer? 😂

But i think the marketing is worse to release seperate SKU's especially at any price markup if all they got is built in hardware at work. The marketing of these teams releasing new games instead of tweaking their old games is far better imo, i think Nintendo will move forth. Buyers as well prefer new, the exclusivity of Switch 2 logo and marketing to only Switch 2 titles i could only see as beneficial to pushing sales momentum of Switch 2, but idk it not happened yet of course
 
VintoWin said:
^^^^^In development for 7 years... This is AAA for Nintendo. ^^^^^

Tears of the Kingdom was $70.

I imagine this game is unlikely to be profitable.
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It's been in development for so many years because it's been a very troubled development and retro studios have been unable to shipping any new game over the past decade.

Whatever AAA means, Metroid prime 4 isn't it. While it's obviously very early to say and I shouldn't draw too many conclusions from a single trailer, the scope of the game from what we've been shown doesn't seem to be trying to really push the series to new heights through gameplay innovations unlike other Nintendo titles that could be defined as high end like mario odyssey or botw, and if there's any meaning to the term, it can't possibly be grouped with thoae in any sense.

Hailinel said:
If Metroid Prime 4's development at Retro was truly a shitshow to the extent it will lose money on release hand over fist, Nintendo would have scrapped it by now and cut losses (again).

That people are wringing hands over the notion the game might need to be $70 just to make a profit is incredibly amateurish armchair analysis.
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There's a real chance that they would absolutely have cancelled it if they hadn't made a big show of announcing it at their E3 direct/conference and everything way back in 2017. Money isn't the only skin nintendo has in the game though; if they cancel prime 4 after (1) announcing it at E3 and (2) making a big show of and apologising that they had to switch development team and restart it entirely. Nintendo would be balancing the serious brand devaluation to the prime series (and maybe metroid as a whole) that'd come from cancelling it at this point, plus the fact that they'd need to do something with retro, because if they can't ship products, they either need to be converted entirely to a support studio or shut down. There's a lot hinging on this other than money.
 
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Why is the assumption many times that Retro has faced a same troubled development as Namco?

The game developed for 5 years under Retro, now has been properly shown and slated for release now as expected. It looks entirely to me like what was to be expected from the cycle, classic but refined MP gameplay, pushing new boundaries with atmosphere in the end scene. Imo, there absolutely 0 red flags we should expect an attempt at a Metroid Prime held together by strings or boogers lol
 
jt155555 said:
Why is the assumption many times that Retro has faced a same troubled development as Namco?

The game developed for 5 years under Retro, now has been properly shown and slated for release now as expected. It looks entirely to me like what was to be expected from the cycle, classic but refined MP gameplay, pushing new boundaries with atmosphere in the end scene. Imo, there absolutely 0 red flags we should expect an attempt at a Metroid Prime held together by strings or boogers lol
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I think some people still expect Retro to turn around and pop a new Metroid Prime out after 2-3 years, which just isn't as feasible in the HD era with the added impact of the pandemic.
 
You can see how many people are from NA here. TotK didn't have a special price tag, it was the same price as BotW and Smash Ultimate.

On Metroid Prime: I think it's insane if they price it at 70. Though I wouldn't be surprised. Metroid isn't a big seller, selling this for 70 won't convince more people to buy it. But I still think there is a good chance this will become the best selling title in the series. This is its best chance to become a big seller with the Switch install base.
 
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Not if Nintendo wants the game to sell. Dread only sold 3 million with tons of marketing, a ten dollar price jump when next year is likely to be packed with giants like 3D Mario, Mario Kart, and Pokémon would be horrible
 
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jt155555 said:
Why is the assumption many times that Retro has faced a same troubled development as Namco?

The game developed for 5 years under Retro, now has been properly shown and slated for release now as expected. It looks entirely to me like what was to be expected from the cycle, classic but refined MP gameplay, pushing new boundaries with atmosphere in the end scene. Imo, there absolutely 0 red flags we should expect an attempt at a Metroid Prime held together by strings or boogers lol
Click to expand...

We will have to see if there's any refinements or boundaries pushed in the final game, the animations and sound design in the trailer were extremely bad. It didn't really come across as a title that had already been in development for 5.5 years and I wouldn't be shocked if there was another reboot that happened in those 5.5 years.
 
Until we know what the file size is I don't see it being $70. And I think that's true of a theoretical Switch 2 version, as more so than Sony/MS pricing of Nintendo's games has to take into consideration the cartridge size and we have no idea yet how much it'll cost to manufacture Switch 2 carts at various capacities.
 
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Nintendo wants the series to grow, not shrink. TotK sold 10 million less than BotW, a pretty massive drop off. Prime Remastered couldn’t even command a $60 price tag and despite launching at $40 it still only sold 1 million worldwide. $70 for Prime 4 would make it DOA, even if it launched on Switch 2.

ItWasMeantToBe19’s hyperbole over the trailer aside, they’re absolutely right to say that trailer we got did absolutely nothing to entice people that weren’t already into Metroid Prime to pick this up, which seems to be a series with a cap of 1 million these days given Prime Remastered was cheap and wasn’t a sequel to anything. Maybe they show a crazy time travel gimmick later but I still think Prime 4 is looking at 2 million shipped when all is said and done. Prime 4 really needs some massive innovations to see much more than that.
 
This is going to be the last time we have this argument about $60 vs $70. Switch 2 is going to be mostly $70.

That's why I'm leaning towards $70. Super late big release with tears already setting the precedent. I think they won't price their 2-5 million sellers at $60 on Switch 2. $70 will just be the new norm for the bigger titles. Idk who knows. Don't you think they will try to charge 70 for whatever the sequel is to Echoes of Wisdom even on Switch 2? And Mario and Luigi Switch 2. Hmm. Maybe Nintendo will be different. I can't decide.
 
VintoWin said:
This is going to be the last time we have this argument about $60 vs $70. Switch 2 is going to be mostly $70.

That's why I'm leaning towards $70. Super late big release with tears already setting the precedent. I think they won't price their 2-5 million sellers at $60 on Switch 2. $70 will just be the new norm for the bigger titles. Idk who knows. Don't you think they will try to charge 70 for whatever the sequel is to Echoes of Wisdom even on Switch 2? And Mario and Luigi Switch 2. Hmm. Maybe Nintendo will be different. I can't decide.
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It’s not going to be $70. This is Switch 1 and they’re not taking that risk with Metroid. It’s not just because it’s a big game. There’s variables to this.
 
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Prime 4 could potentially be the best-selling Prime game (if not Metroid game in general), but people really need to hold their expectations in check if they think it will sell 10 million+.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
I'm expecting Prime 4 to do better than Dread. so over 3M, pushing over 4M.

I'm also expecting a Drake version to help it over the line
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I mean, but why.

Dread is the best selling game in the series because it's a linear action game with absurdly, ridiculously good game feel. What about Prime 4 suggests appeal to an audience beyond people who liked Metroid Prime 3?

Obviously, if there's an industry changing innovation that makes exploration and world based puzzle solving more fun even for casual players, then yes, it could do a lot better, but the footage didn't show that and we have no information outside of the footage.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
I mean, but why.

Dread is the best selling game in the series because it's a linear action game with absurdly, ridiculously good game feel. What about Prime 4 suggests appeal to an audience beyond people who liked Metroid Prime 3?

Obviously, if there's an industry changing innovation that makes exploration and world based puzzle solving more fun even for casual players, then yes, it could do a lot better, but the footage didn't show that and we have no information outside of the footage.
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It's 3D

3D is inherently more exciting
 
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