News surrounding the latest entry into the Metroid Prime series has been very thin since its announcement trailer back in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch. After two years of silence, an update by Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinya Takahashi informed fans that the staff was unhappy with the state of the game in its current build and they were starting over, bringing Retro Studios on board.

Current new and groundbreaking info is still hard to come by. It was reported back in August that Retro Studios had job listings open for key positions like lead graphics engineer, A.I./boss designer, and senior level designer. Nintendo themselves remains fairly tight-lipped about the status of the project, however the brief time it was listed on Amazon, those who pre-ordered copies received an update listing its release date as January 2nd 2023. This is according to @JPSWITCHMANIA on Twitter. 

Currently, Metroid Prime 4's listing has been removed from Amazon, and these arbitrary release dates are always subject to change. However, it is worth noting that on Retro Studios' career page on the Nintendo site, a lot of those job listings have been closed, specifically testers.

That could be a strong indicator that perhaps a demo build of Metroid Prime 4 is making significant progress, or at the very least something ready to be tested relatively soon. Metroid Prime's progress also coincides with the speculation of potential new Switch hardware being announced in 2021. As little is concrete, it's prudent to take Amazon's release date with a grain of salt.