Three former Retro Studios staff, who publicly left the developer earlier this year, have signed a deal with EA to form their own company.

The move sees the team form their own, fully third-party development studio, dubbed Armature, in a publishing collaboration with EA. Louis Castle, who will be the company's acting Executive Producer, said: "I can't begin to describe how thrilled I am to be working with the talented team that created such an amazingly well-crafted series of games."

The trio - Messers Mark Pacini, Jack Mathews and Todd Keller - were Retro's lead designer, lead engineer and art director, respectively. Each member held key roles in the development of the critically acclaimed Metroid Prime series.

Pacini, who directed the original Prime, commented: "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". Could this signal that Armature's first games will not see release on Nintendo's Wii? As it stands, no products are known to be in development, but it shouldn't be too long before we see what EA and Armature can muster up.

We wish all the best to Armature, and their first baby-steps into the foray of independent video game development.