Metroid Prime 4 is selling for $30 in Japan

The Metroid Prime series has historically always struggled in Japan. It was created to appeal to a Western FPS-playing audience, moving away from its roots that made the original games popular in the country. Before Metroid Prime 4, the original Prime title only managed 78,000 sales in the country; Sequel, 40,000; Prime 3,75,000; And, most recently, Metroid Prime Remastered debuted with only 7,960 physical copies sold in its first week.

Go ahead, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. The game had a very troubled development cycle and ended up with sales figures to match; Now copies of the Switch 2 version have been found for around $30.

Metroid Prime 4 has received an unprecedented discount in Japan

Metroid was in development for Prime 4 too long Time, so its launch sales and middling review scores may have spelled disappointment for Nintendo. In its second week on the market, Prime 4 managed to sell 3,000 physical units in Japan. It's no surprise that the entire Metroid series is only Nintendo's 17th-best seller of all time (below Brain Age, Game & Watch, and Nintendogs).

It seems that, four months after its launch, Metroid Prime 4's poor sales are catching up with it, and it has received a huge discount at a Japanese retailer.

Shared on Twitter by user DJmizuhara (via Genki ), one store has copies of the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Prime 4 for sale for ¥4,948 (£23.26/$31.20). That's almost half of its ¥8,890 ($42/$56) starting price.

There's a lot to unpack here. Generally, no matter where you are in the world, Nintendo games never go on sale, and when they do, it's usually for $5. A discount of nearly 50 percent is close to unheard of, especially for a game less than four months old. If that's an indication of how unpopular the Prime series is in Japan, it is.

Given the opposite fate of Metroid Dread, which received exceptionally good reviews, earned a Game of the Year nomination and became the best-selling Metroid game in the process, I wouldn't be surprised if Samus' adventures were limited to 2D from here on out.