Since 2018, strong rumors of a Metroid Prime Trilogy re-release on Switch emerged amid the excitement surrounding Metroid Prime 4‘s development. While Nintendo has been very silent on such gossip until now, many Switch owners are still convinced that they’ll get to experience the timeless collection one day. Well, one of the gaming industry’s voices has stepped up to assure fans that they’re not waiting in vain.

According to industry insider and VentureBeat journalist Jeff Grubb, Metroid Prime Trilogy for Nintendo Switch is indeed “done” already. However, Nintendo is currently hanging on to the title until the “right time” to launch it.

“The game is done and Nintendo is holding it… whether or not Nintendo releases it now or later depends on other factors… I think that game is sitting in their pocket for whenever Nintendo decides it’s the right time, and Nintendo’s done this a lot recently so it’s not unusual, it’s not a sign of some bad thing happening, it’s not a sign of a lack of faith in Metroid… Nintendo can afford [to sit on it] and that’s how they’re treating it.”

Grubb added that the ongoing global pandemic was another factor to consider. In view of current lockdowns in Japan and across the world, there may have been slow downs for the Quality Assurance (QA) process of Nintendo’s games.

“I think a big problem for Nintendo for quite some time during the pandemic was QA… I think Nintendo was focusing its quality assurance resources on one or two big projects at a time and that meant that some games that were basically finished were sitting on the side, while they had their lockdown secure QA processes focused on one or two more important games… Japan is still dealing with these issues so I don’t think those processes are going to open up any time soon.”

Finally, Grubb also cited that Nintendo was probably waiting to use Metroid Prime Trilogy as more of a “marketing beat” to hype up the eventual release of Metroid Prime 4 on Switch.

“The other factor for Metroid Prime Trilogy is that it’s definitely going to be a marketing beat for Metroid Prime 4, almost certainly. So right now we’re getting Metroid Dread this year and then I would imagine that Metroid Prime trilogy is something they’ll release close to the release of Metroid Prime 4, whenever that is.”

This corroborates previous comments by former Game Informer senior editor Imran Khan, who stated that Nintendo was preparing a Metroid Prime Trilogy Switch release. However, a former Retro Studios developer has also argued recently that a Switch port of the collection was not likely since the developer of the collection no longer had the editing tools required to tweak the game for a Switch release.

As with all unconfirmed information, we urge our readers to take Grubb’s words with a grain of salt. We’ll report back if we hear more in the future.