Metroid Prime 4 Has Been Trying To Hire A Lead Producer For 3 Months

Metroid Prime 4 has not had the best track record so far since it was initially announced by Nintendo on June 13, 2017 during the Nintendo Spotlight at E3. The game was announced for the Nintendo Switch roughly 10 years after the release of a previous game in the Metroid Prime series, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Since the announcement of the game, Nintendo came forward with yet another announcement, this time with less savory information for fans.

It was revealed that the game would be scrapped and that development would be started over from scratch. The studio that would be taking over the title would be none other than Retro Studios, the same studio that developed the previous Metroid Prime games.

Today, information has surfaced that Retro Studios is looking to hire a lead producer for the upcoming Metroid game. A listing of the job’s duties can be seen below:

Metroid Prime 4 Lead Producer Duties:

• Responsible for maintaining project timelines and forecasting for all products in development.
• Provides studio-wide risk reports to the Development Director for use in risk mitigation and partner messaging.
• Responsible for studio-wide communication of project status.
• Maintain head-count allocations and long-term staffing projections.
• Collaborate with QA and Department Coordinators to ensure the timely delivery of milestones.
• Ensure clear communication and swift resolution of cross-department dependencies.
• Manage internal/external partnerships and dependencies.
• Collaborate with the legal and finance departments to shepherd external vendor MSAs and SOWs through draft, execution, amendment, and payment.
• Work with Department Coordinators to ensure our JIRA database is an accurate reflection of current and planned work.
• Provide direction to the IT Department on the configuration of our JIRA database.

We are looking for a 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝗲𝗿 to join us on our journey to develop Metroid Prime 4! #GameJobs #GameDev #GameDevJobshttps://t.co/NWVPLGel3E pic.twitter.com/4hpOgw0Byg

— Retro Studios (@RetroStudios) August 14, 2020

At face value, this doesn’t seem like much, but when inspecting further it appears that the job listing for a lead producer position was posted back on May 11, 2020.

Not only is it worrisome that Metro Studios is searching for a lead producer at this point in the game’s development cycle, but it is even further worrisome that they haven’t had one at all for at LEAST 3 months now (maybe not at all). On top of looking to fill the producer role, Retro also have seemingly unfilled job listings listed online for both a lead graphics engineer and lead animator engineer dating back to 2019.

While both of these additional roles don’t mention Metroid Prime 4 directly, it is reasonable to assume that they may be related.

With the developmental cycles that Metroid Prime 4 has undergone this far, it is likely that we won’t be hearing any news about the game’s release anytime soon. The new Prime game probably won’t be dropping for another few years at this point. Maybe Retro Studios is taking their time in regards to hiring, ensuring that only top talent make it onto the team. It’s reasonable for such high level positions to not be filled quickly, especially with the current health crisis causing additional difficulties in the work place.