Bill Trinen, the director of product marketing at Nintendo of America, confirmed that it would involve Tanabe but not Retro Studios, which had developed the previous Prime games.

[1][4] While not confirmed by Nintendo, Eurogamer reported that Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco Studios in Japan and Singapore.

[8] In January 2019, the Nintendo EPD general manager, Shinya Takahashi, announced that development had restarted under Retro Studios with Tanabe.

[9] In October 2020, Retro posted a job advertisement seeking storyboard artists to work on "emotional" and "interesting and innovative scenes that elevate the narrative".

[1][12] It showcased similar gameplay to previous Metroid games, with Samus exiting her gunship, exploring a forest world, using her morph ball ability, scanning a Space Pirate and encountering Sylux.