 Hey everyone, Nate Jance here, and I have a spicy one for you today. This is about Metroid Prime 4, or I should say, potentially about Metroid Prime 4 because we cannot confirm that that's exactly what this position that Retro Studios is hiring for is about, but we do know that Retro Studios is working on Metroid Prime 4, they've been hiring a lot of people since it was announced they were doing it, and it's made us basically feel like Metroid Prime 4 isn't coming for a while, that development started shortly before it was publicly announced, and when they rebooted development earlier this year or late in 2018, it was just thought that, well, we're not going to see Metroid Prime 4 for two or three years, maybe 2021, 2022, at the earliest, potentially might not even be here until launch of the next system from Nintendo, but thanks to Dr.81, I'll link to his channel down in the description because he is the person who pointed this out, he is well known as a job listing sleuth, he's very good at scouring job listings at various companies as they crop up, and finding little details that lead to basically uncover information about games that maybe is flying under the radar. What he actually is probably more well known for at least this year is that he actually uncovered information about CD Projekt Red working on the Witcher 3 for Nintendo Switch months before it was even announced, so again, there is a reason that sleuthing these job listings can actually provide you quite a bit of information, SuperMetalDave64 as well, does that a lot when he's looking for evidence for the Switch Pro, so what do we have here? Well, we are on Retro Studio's official hiring page on careers.nintendo.com, and it says that they are hiring a contract environmental outsourced review artist, this is literally in the name of the title, meaning that they have outsourced for some game environment development. Now, it's not unusual to have certain things outsourced, but it is unusual to see them hiring someone to review it per se because Nintendo does put multiple teams on a project. As an example, Breath of the Wild was primarily headed up by the Zelda team and all that headed up by Aji Adomo, but we do know that Monolithsoft helped develop that game as well, especially in the final year when it went over to Switch. But they didn't really hire anyone specifically to review Monolithsoft's work, because Monolithsoft is owned by Nintendo, to have an environment outsourcing review artist suggest that they have outsourced this to a different company that Nintendo doesn't own, and they want to make sure they review the assets coming in, that they are the highest quality and match with the game. Now, this first little bit is just all about the information about Retro Studios, but descriptions of duties are to review outsourced content to ensure final deliverables reflect the desired artistic vision. So Retro Studios is still heading up everything, they have a vision for the game, but they need someone to make sure that the company they hired that they outsourced this information to, or outsourced the environments to, is living up to their standards and their own vision. So it's still going to be Retro Studios vision, but it's another company doing really a huge part of the work. Environmental design is a massive workload, so we're going to get into why that matters, that this might be outsourced for Metroid Prime 4 in a moment. It says create and or modify existing assets as necessary, so if they need to, you know, modify stuff coming in, you need the ability to do that, provide detail and organize management of a high volume of assets related to art, so a lot of the environment stuff coming in is art assets and stuff. Ensure ongoing timely feedback to external vendors working on art content. Again, this is just another reference to there's external companies working on art assets for this game, you need to be able to work with them. Accurately estimate the time necessary to complete individual assets. That's obviously really important for game development. Test levels in game and assess both aesthetics and performance on the switch. So literally, this person will also be testing this content in the game. Collaborate with relevant stakeholders to evaluate external teams proficiency in art production. Again, kind of monitoring what's happening at this external company, whichever company it is. And then generate detailed documentation and examples of art asset production procedures and your requirements to support the external vendors. So this is just a lot of, just a lot of, hey, you're literally in charge of making sure that these, this company we hired is doing the job that we hired them to do and doing it to the quality level that we expect. Summary requirements to get this position, obviously prior outsourcing experience, thorough understanding of current artistic technical requirements for video game production pipelines, artistic eye for core artistic principles, including color, composition, structure and perspective. I've said just a lot of, hey, hopefully you have a lot of experience with art asset and design, because you need to have a good eye. Excellent communication, organization skills, promise solving skills, ability to give and receive feedback with a gracious consideration, experience creating art specifically for video game software using current tools, of course, because you might have to modify some of the stuff coming in yourself. Five plus years experience in triple a video game production, including several product cycles or equivalent experience, undergraduate degree in art related subject or completion of an intense art training program. Oh, so basically just some sort of college degree related to art. But what's more important is that you've taken that and you've used it for experience in making triple a game for five years. So now this is a big deal, because if they are outsourcing environmental design, and this is just what I know from talking to developers myself about how game design, game programming works, environmental design can be sometimes 50 to 60% of actual development time, if you're doing it all internally, because a large part of what we see on screen as players are the art assets, we see the textures we see the character designs though the level designs though the the world, you know, everything we see we physically see was designed by an environment and or artist team, the character designs a little different from environment design, this is a studio just doing or whoever they hired just doing the environment not doing the characters. But still, it's all related to like the same thing. So environmental design environmental creation is a huge part of game development. And if it is outsourced, the idea here is that Metroid Prime four could be coming a hell of a lot sooner than we expect. I mean, we're talking potentially next year. That's the kind of timetable that's converted on, because if you take almost 50% or so of what you actually have to develop and you outsource it to someone else, plus Retro Studios has a history of Metroid Prime only taking two to three years at most to even make a game. You kind of are set here where, hey, look, even if this isn't ready for next year, this could be an early 2021 title which nobody expects I think the earliest people expect is like holiday 2021. I think that's a reasonable expectation. So maybe maybe we'll have it by then. But what if it's actually going to be coming this year, or as the first major game launched in 2021, or this year next year 2020, it's not 2020 yet, Nate, don't get ahead of yourself. Wouldn't that be crazy? If this if this hiring is assuming it is from Metroid Prime four, because again, Retro Studios could have multiple projects in the works, we don't know. But considering that this job literally popped up like two days ago, it definitely feels like this is for Metroid, because we know they're working on Metroid, they've obviously have outsourced and now they want someone to manage that outsourcing. And what's cool about outsourcing is when you grab a studio that specifically just making environmental design, they actually will have a much easier time doing that than say, Retro Studios where they have the whole team together that are working on all these different things. So they could hire this company be like, hey, we're going to pay you X amount of money to make this and that studio could have hundreds of people working on that environmental design to get it done, you know, in a month or something, it's all going to depend on what what studio they hired and what the demands are and all that. So now why is this the case, Retro Studios has not typically outsourced their environment creation, that there are assets for it, they have not typically done this, they've almost always made it internally. So that's another sign pointing to the fact, well, in the past, they didn't do this. Now they're doing it. Nintendo wants this game out sooner than later. And that could have actually been one of the pitches to Nintendo, when Retro Studios can remember, this was being made by another company, we think it was Bandai Namco, but we're not actually sure. There's rumors out there about being split up between a whole bunch of different studios and then Nintendo didn't like what was coming together. But again, that's rumors, we don't actually know that as a fact, but what we do know is it was being developed by a different studio. And Nintendo obviously didn't like the progress, because Retro Studios came and pitched to them two years after it was announced, pitched to them an idea for Metroid Prime. And Nintendo said, that's really good, we're going with you. And they literally, you know, took a loss on whatever money they had already invested in the development of the game. So yeah, they had to design some demo or something, of course. So Retro Studios wanted it, we don't know what happened with Retro Studios with other games they were working on. But we know they wanted this, they made it happen. And now here we are today talking about Metroid Prime 4. So we know that, we know that for Nintendo, it was obviously new people were going to be upset when they said the game was rebooted, two years after it being announced. Oh yeah, by the way, the game's rebooted. So now you guys have to wait even longer. So what if part of that pitch was not only that, oh, we have an awesome idea for this, we'll give it to you in two years. What if they said, give us two years, and we will have Metroid Prime 4 ready for you. Part of doing that is having the budget and having the freedom to hire an outside company to help with things like environmental design and environmental art assets. So I think this is going to be really cool. Metroid Prime 4 is obviously one of my most hyped games for Switch in the upcoming years, whenever it does come out. And I realize that if anyone pays specific attention to Nintendo's stable of IPs, Metroid is a very important IP, but it's also not really a great seller. It's more on the level of the Kirby games, if you can believe it. But it costs a lot more money to make. So it's very interesting to me, Nintendo's even kept Metroid going this long. And they took a loss on Metroid Prime 4 to reboot it in the first place, which is just baffling to me. I would think that Pikmin 4 game, they have just sitting on a shelf somewhere would be a better investment just to finish that up and release. But I'm glad it's happening. Maybe it's just Nintendo doesn't always make the best business decisions when it comes to releasing games. There are specific games in specific franchises they release because they believe in that franchise. And Metroid is one of those franchises where the sales don't justify the investment, but they know it drives a lot of hype. They know it owns the internet when they release a trailer, just like it did for other M. And they know that it builds goodwill with their consumers. And it's obviously a product they believe in. They have plenty of other products that are made specifically because they sell a crap load. The Mario's, the Zelda's, Splatoons now, the Mario Kart's, Fire Emblem even has entered that territory, Animal Crossing etc. We get a lot of those games because they sell huge numbers. And we get a Kirby game every single year because Kirby's cheap to make and it's guaranteed to sell over a million units like every single time. So why not just put out cheap Kirby games because people keep buying them. But Metroid's not really like that. They invest several millions of dollars into making the games. And when it bombs like other M did, Nintendo loses a lot of money. And that's why Metroid's been on the shelf. Yes, Samus Returns was great, but again that was a low investment. This Metroid Prime is a huge investment for Nintendo. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens with it. Hopefully good things happen because if Metroid Prime 4 bombs, that could be it for Metroid fans. And I hope that's not the case. Oh and by the way, whenever Bayonetta 3 comes out, check it out. We want to get more platinum games. Anyways folks, I am Nate Jantz. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you like this video, drop a like, subscribe for more content. Yes, for those that might be confused, I am formerly Nathaniel Ruffle Jantz of Nintendo Prime. We have rebranded the channel just to my short name and that's just the way it's going to be. So hopefully you guys can get used to it. I know there's been some people messaging me, tweeting at me, like who's this guy? Why don't I subscribe to this channel? It's Nintendo Prime everyone. But uh, not. It's now me. And this is what you get. Have a good day.