Three of the principal developers of the critically acclaimed Metroid Prime series have announced the formation of Austin-based developer Armature Studio, alongside a "long-term, exclusive" publishing deal with Electronic Arts. The company is headed by Mark Pacini, Todd Keller and Jack Mathews, the former game director, art director and principal technology engineer of the Retro Studios-developed Nintendo franchise. According to a statement from the developer, "The goal of Armature is to create compelling new intellectual properties with a unique development framework that leverages a small core creative team and partners them with strategic external developers." The business model is designed to "...enhance the creative flexibility of a small independent studio while offering modular scale through external partnerships." The company has signed a long-term exclusive publishing deal with Electronic Arts. "We are very excited about trying to rethink how games are developed for this generation of consoles, and our partners at EA have been nothing but supportive in this pursuit," said Pacini. "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." "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," said Louis Castle of EA's Blueprint studio and acting executive producer of the Armature Studio games.