It’s not really a new story; teams and individuals who have proved they can create titles both critically and commercially successful break off from their employers to form their own studio. The director, art director and principal tech engineer from Nintendo’s huge success Metroid Prime have broken away from Nintendo to form a studio in Austin called Armature. They’ve inked a publishing deal with EA who will hopefully treat them as the precious commodity they are.

The reasons for this move are probably some of the usual motivations for this: more money as well as more creative control. Metroid Prime game director Mark Pacini spoke of his excitement about his newfound freedom: “what really gets me going is that now, no platform is off limits. That is just something we didn’t have the ability to do before,”