Answer: I don't go to Kotaku.
Secondly, good posts take time
, time better spent not trying to take on the entire internet.
As far as I know they are "Real" companies. Have a look under P
here. Look at the "Projects". The vast majority of them are formed for a very specific function. You won't go to the trouble of making them if it didn't serve a purpose.
Project Sora's disbandment might not be employment related as it might not have contained any production employees. It very could have well been a telephone in an office somewhere. Whatever function it served, it ended with Kid Icarus. My first guess is likely to be wrong, it could simply be a holding/shell company to facilitate some temporary transfer of tech/copyright without entangling each other at the end of the project.
The cycle of hiring and firing employees in the western development scene is very destructive and isn't very good for building institutional knowledge, trust or any sense of loyalty to each other, let alone the company. I don't think Nintendo is into that sort of thing.
It's actually commonplace in the US film industry as well.
The production company for
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is basically a
shell company. They even pointed it out in the DVD special features(Not online as far as a quick search goes). The company was formed just to make the movie and everybody was in on it.