We found this rumor today that may have some legs to it and may also explain a little better why their next game was absent from E3 this year.

- Nintendo has been in panic mode over Retro for the last year
- Retro’s Wii U project is far along in development
- it has had a rocky development road
- Nintendo has flown a few employees from NST out to Austin, Texas to supervise Retro’s project
- major gaps in positions and staff have caused delays and frustrations
- Nintendo is currently rebuilding and restructuring Retro Studios
- more senior talent to leave Retro Studios after Retro’s Wii U game is completed
- id receiving resumes from current and former Retro staff
- “Yeah, we receive resumes from Retro employees. From what I understand, Retro Studios is bleeding away their talent.” – id dev
- Retro Studios employees considering a jump over to Bioware Austin after their obligations to the Wii U project are complete
- Wii U title will be created without the majority of the top designers and top engineers responsible for the Metroid Prime trilogy
- Nintendo believes Retro acted out in protest when employees left the company
- Nintendo sought out another developer to handle Metroid to show Retro that the series was bigger than them

Also something less comforting is this list of people at Retro Studios that had left during or after the development of the Metroid Prime Trilogy:

• Karl Deckard – Senior Designer of Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3.  (Left Retro to work at Sucker Punch)
• Jason Behr – Designer of Metroid Prime.  Senior designer on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes  (Now works with 343 on Halo 4.)
• Andy O’ Neil -  Technical Lead Engineer and principal engineer on Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes .  (He left Retro to become president of Bluepoint Games)
• Marco Thrush – Senior Software Engineer on Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3.  (Left Retro to work at Bluepoint Games.)
• Steve McCrea – Engineering and Senior Engineering on Metroid Prime 1, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption   (He is now the Senior AI Engineer at Armature Studio)
• David “Zoid” Kirsh – Senior engineer on Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3.  Zoid is responsible for the data streaming that takes place when you travel from one section of the world to the next.   Also responsible for the Queen Parasite boss encased in a giant cylindrical shield.   David “Zoid” Kirsh worked on Quake games with ID before joining Retro Studios.   (Zoid Kirsh left Retro Studios after the Metroid Prime trilogy and he now works for Valve on network interaction in multiplayer games. He also works on in-game action such as rule systems and scripting solutions for player interactivity.)
• Paul Tozour – Senior engineer for Retro Studios from July 2003 to June 2008. According to his resume, he worked on extensive gameplay, AI, and tools development for Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and two other projects.  One of the projects was most likely Donkey Kong Country Returns.
  His responsibilities included extensive AI development on dozens of creature AI systems and boss encounters.  Also designed and built an extensive real-time artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic and debugging tool set, a collision abstraction system, an attachment management system, and refactored path finding systems for flying and jumping creatures.  Rewrote the internal in-game diagnostic menu system to be hierarchical and use the Wii remote.  He also mentored several engineers in AI development.
• Alejandro Roura – Environment artist and full-time Animator for Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3.  Worked as an animator and environment artist for Retro Studios from 2000 to 2007.  (Now works as animator at Crystal Dynamics. Probably working on “Tomb Raider”.)
• Frank Lafaente -Engineering Director on all three Metroid Prime games.  (Currently, Frank is a Director of Gameplay programming at Insomniac Games.)
• Kai Martin -  Software engineer on all three Metroid Prime games.  (Currently working as a V.P. – Development at Thomas TradeWeb)
• Chip Sbrogna – One of 4 level designers on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes.  Now works at Sixense Studios creating DLC for Valve’s Portal 2.
• Ben Sprout – Artist on Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3.  (Currently works at Guerilla Games.  His last two games were Killzone 2 and Killzone 3.)
• Aaron de Orive – Lead writer/Story consultant for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
• Cliff Young – World Artist for Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
• Bobby Pavlock – A level designer on Metroid Prime 3: Corruption who left Retro to work at Gearbox and then became Sr. Designer at Armature Studio.
• Todd Simmons – Audio contractor for Metroid Prime 2 and 3.
• Ilya Nazaou  – Artist for Metroid Prime 3 who now works for Bethesda.  See his amazing artwork here: http://ilyanazarov.com/
• Tom Papadatos – Senior Artist on Metroid Prime 1  (Now Lead Character Artist at Disney Interactive Studios)
• James H. Dargie – Senior Artist and designer on Metroid Prime 1 (He is now currently Studio Art Director at Sony Computer Entertainment America)
• Ian Olsen – Character artist for Metroid Prime 3
• Sonny Santa Maria – Contract Animation for Metroid Prime 3 (Left Retro to work at companies like Sony and Sega).
• Michael Cheng – Level Designer for Metroid Prime 2 from Aug 2003 - May 2005 (Left Retro and became lead level designer at Sony and LucasArts.  Then became lead game designer at Electronic arts.)
• Amanda Rubright -  Game and Level designer on Metroid Prime 1 between 2001 through 2003.  (After MP1, she left to work for companies like Ubisoft and Junction Point.)
• Tony Giovannini – Was a level designer for Metroid Prime 1.
• Nate Purkeypile – World Artist and Cinematics Scripter on Metroid Prime 3.  (Currently a Senior World Artist at Bethesda Softworks)

Let’s hope everything goes well at Retro and doesn’t fall to the same fate as Rare.