Before Metroid Dread was unveiled a few months ago, everyone was holding out hope for the ephemeral Metroid Prime 4, which was announced way back when the Switch was first released. However, I think many of us had forgotten how long it’d actually been since we got a mainline Metroid game, the last one being Metroid Fusion, so when Dread was announced, everyone was sort of like “oh yeah, that works too, give us more of that.” Well, it’s been… actually it’s been a pretty short wait, but the point is that it’s almost up. Here’s the release date and time for Metroid Dread.
Metroid Dread Release Date and Time
Metroid Dread is releasing in digital format on the Switch eShop and on physical cartridges this Friday, October 8th, 2021. At time of writing, Metroid Dread has been available for pre-order on the Switch for a while, and has also had pre-load available since last Friday. I should know, I just pre-ordered and pre-loaded it about an hour ago.
If you pre-load the digital version, you’ll be able to play it as soon as it unlocks at 12:00 AM Eastern time on October 8th. Those in Pacific time will be able to play at 9:00 PM on October 7th, and those in Central time will be able to play at 11:00 PM that same night.
Metroid Dread’s file size measures in at a surprisingly lean 4.1 GB. That’s small enough to fit on a Switch’s internal storage, so don’t worry if you don’t have an external SD memory card. If you’ve got a nice, strong internet connection, you can download the whole game in around 30 minutes to an hour.
Remember, if you pre-load, you’ll have all of the essential game files, but you’ll still need a little extra time to download a couple of additional files and unpack everything, so you might not be able to play at midnight on the dot.
