If Nintendo really loves Metroid, it should set Samus free

Nintendo games sell millions of copies. Tens of millions, in some cases, particularly on the Nintendo Switch. Not just the obvious candidates like Mario and Pokemon, but even the secondary mascots like Kirby and Luigi. The last Luigi's Mansion game sold more than 14 million copies, proving Mario's mascot doesn't necessarily need his brother to be successful.

There is an exception, though, and that exception is Metroid. Metroid games have been a staple of Nintendo since the NES. There are 17 games in the series, soon to be 18 when Metroid Prime 4: Beyond launches this December, with almost every Nintendo console getting its own Metroid game, and in some cases multiple releases.

For 35 years, the original Metroid was the best-selling game in the series, having sold 2.73 million copies. Metroid Dread on the Nintendo Switch broke that long standing record by becoming the first game in the series to break down that three million sold barrier.

Those numbers would be welcomed by a lot of developers. They're pretty small compared to Nintendo's standards, though. Super Mario Odyssey, which is closing in on 30 million copies sold and will have likely surpassed that by the time Nintendo releases its next quarterly figures, has not only outsold the best-selling Metroid game tenfold, it has sold eight million copies more than the entire 17-game Metroid series combined.

When you step back and look at what Nintendo is and what it represents, or even just ask the average person in the street what they think of when they hear Nintendo, it's fairly obvious why Metroid games don't sell well. Nintendo is the family gaming company. It's built on colorful characters and, even though I still play them as a grown ass adult, games that are aimed primarily at children.

Metroid games are the exception to that. While I'm sure there are kids out there who play them, or even kids who grew up on the earlier entries, Metroid games are not designed with kids in mind. They're difficult, violent, and at times even pretty scary. Running from EMMIs in Metroid Dread comfortably makes it into the top ten scariest things that's ever happened to me in a video game.

There is a Metroid audience out there, and I mean one bigger than the three million of us who will buy Metroid Prime 4. I'm talking about people who have never played Metroid games before. Adults gamers who might not even consider Nintendo games because, like I said, whether you like it or not, Nintendo games are often categorised as being for kids, leading many to write them off as soon as they see the red and white splash screen.

If Nintendo wants Metroid to sell more copies, it needs to put Metroid games on other platforms. I know just thinking about using a DualSense to control Samus is probably enough to earn you a cease and desist from Nintendo's lawyers, but for the most part, the kinds of people who would love Metroid Prime 4 aren't doing their gaming on a Nintendo console.

The problem is, even in an era where it's trusting other studios with its movies, and reluctantly pairing up with Universal for its theme parks, Nintendo remains almost entirely unwilling to branch out in the same way when it comes to its games. It had the chance to put Samus in Fortnite once, something that could have been the first step to Metroid games coming to Xbox.PlayStation, and PC. However, when Nintendo demanded that players on non-Nintendo platforms could neither unlock the skin nor see it if they encountered someone wearing it, the deal fell through.

That unwillingness to bend, even for a single series that doesn't sell well compared to your other flagships, is hurting Metroid. There's a self-inflicted ceiling on Metroid's sales, and that ceiling is roughly three million copies, or ten percent of a Mario Odyssey.

I do get where Nintendo is coming from. People buy Nintendo consoles because it's the only place they can play Nintendo games. However, those Nintendo games are Mario and Zelda, not Metroid, at least not to the extent that it makes it worth keeping Samus all to itself. Nintendo doesn't need to cave and start putting Mario games on everything, but if it were to set its most un-Nintendo-y series free and put Metroid on all platforms, it would be a much bigger deal than it has been at any point during the four decades it has been chained to Nintendo hardware.

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