It won't have escaped the attention of a single Metroid fan that this year the only announcement regarding the franchise came in the form of a 3DS spinoff, Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a game that some core fans are so disappointed with that there's a petition against it.
Their disappointment may even grow when fans hear what series producer Kensuke Tanabe said to Eurogamer at E3, that the amount of content required for a new full game in the series would require several years to develop, and now any new Metroid game was more likely to end up on NX than Wii U.
"If we started for Wii U now, it would likely take three years or so. So it would likely now be on Nintendo's NX console," Tanabe said. "It's a long time but it would need to include a lot of content, which would take a lot of work on the development side."
An understandable response to all of this from a fan's perspective might be to ask why they haven't started working on such a game already, especially when considering the suitability of the Wii U GamePad for the task. Simply put, it's looking like Metroid and/or Metroid Prime are some way off:
"It is a great idea, I agree. Truth be told, making HD games takes a lot of time and resources. I haven't been able to collect a team or the resources to do it."