If you recall, a trio of key employees from Retro’s Metroid Prime development team decided to take leave of the studio last April.

The three that left have since formed Armature Studio, a startup “built on the foundation of finding a new way to make AAA quality games with a smaller team.” Based in Austin, Texas, the studio’s development efforts are being overseen by Electronic Arts, whom Armature has signed a exclusive publishing deal with to create games for all three major platforms — the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii.

“From my stand point, I’ve never worked on any other console. I’ve always made games for Nintendo,” former Metroid Prime design director Mark Pacini told Kotaku. He added, “I’m reinvigorated. I’m really excited about what other opportunities are out there. How can we use Xbox Live? How can we use the power of the PS3?”

A part of EA’s creative-focused Blueprint studio, Armature will not function as a traditional development house. Instead, they will work on prototypes of sorts and once a title is greenlit, it will be sent over to another studio to work on, with folks from Armature taking over directorial duties. It’s an approach aimed at minimizing risk.

Metroid Prime Devs Eye 360, PS3 for Future Games [Kotaku]

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