Team Ninja Will Bring “Special Sauce” to Metroid: Other M

Nintendo has a lot of franchises that it develops and which generate some very big profits, like Mario or The Legend of Zelda, but another key series for the Japanese company, and one that was very popular on its consoles, is Metroid.

In a pretty interesting turn of events, the gaming giant announced at its E3 press conference that the next title in the series, Metroid: Other M, would be developed by Tecmo's Team Ninja studio, better known for titles like Dead or Alive or Ninja Gaiden.

Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime talked about this move and revealed just how important the series was to the Japanese company and how Team Ninja would definitely bring that “special sauce” to the series and make it even more popular.

“It's all about what we can do creatively with a franchise to revitalise it,” Fils-Aime said. “A year ago, if someone asked me what's going on with Metroid – when are we going to go back to the more traditional Metroid series versus the path that we went down with Prime? Here's the answer: Other M. Metroid, for us, is a key franchise and in our view, since the SNES Metroid, we haven't broken through – as in selling 1.5 or two million units. As we looked at where we wanted to go with Metroid, we wanted to place Samus back in the more traditional lineage of Metroid. We wanted to do it in a way that had a harder edge, and we wanted to go deeper into her story and more into this Metroid mythology.”

The executive said that the move had also generated some positive feedback in the developer community. “We could've done a fine job on our own. But, we saw the Team Ninja group as a way of adding a little extra special sauce, if you will, to make it a really compelling experience. One of the pieces of feedback I've heard is that as we made that announcement, that there were a lot of development teams and publishers who started to say to themselves, 'Wow, Nintendo is open to these types of partnerships. Let's think of other ideas to bring forward.' Which I find exciting.”

Do you think Team Ninja will do a good job with Metroid: Other M? Or should Nintendo keep on developing its franchises by itself? Leave us a comment with your opinions.