As we all know, Armature is a company founded by former Retro Studios staff members — and it would appear that they've added another to their ranks.
According to his CV on LinkedIn, Tom Ivey — who was one of the designers on Donkey Kong Country Returns, which was recently ported to the 3DS — is now firmly ensconced within the walls of Armature's Austin HQ.
The studio is currently hard at work on Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, which will be hitting the 3DS later this year. Armature had been off the radar until quite recently, when it was revealed that the company had worked on Capcom's cancelled Mega Man FPS, Maverick Hunter.
Ivey's move to Armature should bode well for the company's future output, but where does that leave Retro Studios? It's expected that the firm will reveal what it has been working on at this year's E3, which takes place next week.
[source linkedin.com, via nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 21
What's happening at Retro? I hope they are hiring people as good as the ones that are leaving. We don't want a Rare situation.
Seems several of Retro's Lead Developers have been leaving in recent years. I believe a few of them were even hired by "343 Studios" to work on the Halo Franchise. Hopefully this doesn't affect the company and their ability to create stellar games to much
I hope there is some talent left at Retro!
I was gonna ask if this is a good thing, or bad... I don't need to ask... this seems bad...
If he only worked on donkey kong he probably wasn't that good. The real talent are the guys who worked on Prime
Good news for Batman,slightly worrying news for Retro fans.
Consider me slightly worried. What's going on that everyone wants to leave a fantastic studio? Some Prime developers mentioned they wanted more variety in projects, maybe that's it?
Yeah I'm not liking what I'm hearing here either. I guess we will find out if Retro still has that magic on the next game they produce. I'm going to guess its another of the current franchise sine they said they thought their talents were not being used to their fullest by working on older games. So much for the new IP?!?!
For every person that leaves any position of leadership at a company like Retro there are 5 or 10 that are dying to climb the ladder and bring fresh ideas to the table. Creativity in situations like this seems to be destroyed by overbearing parent companies not by a loss of personel. See Infinity Ward or Rare or any company under the EA banner.
As long as Nintendo lets Retro be Retro I'm not too worried.
My comment would echo all of the above...
This is two months old.
Nintendo is still guiding the studio, so I see no reason to worry.
I knew there was a Prime-ish feeling in Halo 4, just look at the enemies! They should still be working on some great games though, especially with the fact they had expanded their Studio last year.
Completely normal in the industry, don't worry people. Retro even hired people from Naughty Dog (and some staff from Vigil) and you don't see their games going down in quality. Happens all the time, just another day in the industry.
@citizenerased
I think it's also probable that they'd like the freedom to be able to develop for a bunch of different platforms, rather than just being restricted to Nintendo systems.
@Tuurtledove What some people don't understand is that Retro is good thanks to Nintendo. When they were working for Nintendo AND Acclaim (Akklaim?), the three games they were developing for them were horrible (according to Retro's director)...that is, until Nintendo bought the rest of Retro Studios from Acclaim and Miyamoto told them to cancel Raven Blade (and another game they were developing) to focus on Metroid Prime (the third game they were developing back then).
We all know how that ended.
@shinpichu From a game creator's point of view I don't see how that makes sense, unless it's about technology not available on Nintendo systems. So... Kinect?
I really hope we don't see another Rareware happening here. I hope they still have some peeps left if then decide to work on the new Zelda. :-/
Guys, this is a Western Studio, not EAD. People regularly leaving and getting hired is a normal as a sunny day.
@NintendoPro64: True, it's just that no one wants to see Retro degrade in current quality of their output.
I really wish to see light from this new "Retro" Armature. They have potential, but they haven't seem to shed off the shadows of their former collaborations, as shown about Maverick Hunter.
@citizenerased Maybe a more mature-friendly console and more raw power.
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