Last night, IGNCube reported that there is even MORE trouble for Retro Studios. According to their sources, Nintendo laid off an additional 3 programmers, though it is not known if the programmers were assigned to the “Retro RPG” or the new Metroid game—Retro Studios’ only two remaining NGC projects.

IGNCube’s sources claim that Nintendo has not been pleased with Retro’s work ethic & were swift to take action this week in the form of layoffs.

Sources further alleged that Retro recently missed a milestone date for its RPG. In the industry milestones or landmarks are "review days" used to keep development on track. For example, one milestone might be to have the animation interface fully functional or even to have "X" amount of levels running by a chosen date. If you miss a milestone it isn't looked highly upon.

The supposed milestone that Retro missed for its RPG is speculated to be linked to the April 1st "E3 Test Review" date, which was revealed by NOA's vice president of marketing, George Harrison, in an IGNcube interview. He commented, "Around April 1st Mr. Miyamoto and others will sit down and start to make their decisions on which games are good enough to be playable versus on videotape at [E3]."

For being a relatively newly formed entity comprised of numerous talented individuals, Retro has already earned a reputation of being the most problematic Nintendo second-party developer. Shortly after it was revealed that it would develop a new Metroid game, reports surfaced that the company & Nintendo were contesting the direction the highly-anticipated sequel should take.

The company even took massive heat from gamers when IGNCube reported the rumor that Metroid would be an FPS (though now is officially labeled as a “First Person Adventure”) reports that originally confused us into thinking there was a Retro FPS in development.

The most recent layoffs complement previous layoffs in Febuary and two of Retro’s projects being canceled, including a very-cool looking car game Thunder Rally (for which concept art recently surfaced).

With all this trouble for Retro, it’s possible Metroid might not be playable at E3, which would push the whole debate of how the game will be work even further back. Then again, IGNCube indicates that the RPG project is the one that is missing deadlines and since Retro has only two GameCube projects left, the pressure is on! Retro will certainly be dedicating its remaining (yet still ample) resources to getting its projects in top form under Nintendo’s watchful eye, hopefully in time for E3.

We hope this isn’t the sign of more bad things to come for the talented second-party developer & are also optimistic that Retro will give Nintendophiles plenty to cheer about when its products are released.