Those 9 years represent the ramp up after a games release & the ramp up to a games release.  In the next six months if there is a surprise announcement & lauch then you could say they released 4 new games, a compilation including two new ports and contributed to 2 portable games in 10 years.  Suddenly that doesn't look nearly as bad.

Don't tease me like that!

This would be a dream come true.

You never know with Nintendo xD... I'd prefer a reboot or a completely new IP.

Yup, that's the first thing I thought of. I suspect they'll start work on a new project.

If we're looking at 10 years, 3 games and a port is still almost equally as dismal. I am not sure where this mysterious fourth game is coming in, there haven't been any new Retro developed games announced in years. There's not really a guarantee that they'll even announce anything this year, let alone release anything this year (and that would be completely consistent with what we have received from Retro most years they have existed as a studio). At the rate they develop games, it'll probably be 2014 or 2015 before we see any new game from Retro. Consider that it took them over three and a half years to develop a 2D platformer on the Wii; and now they're working with a more complex console that requires more dev time.

It's a balancing act, and not all about volume. A studio doesn't need to pop out a ton of games to be considered great. Team ICO gave us, in 12 years, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. For those I consider the studio great. Greater than, say, Infinity Ward, which gave us five games in 10 years.

Now, if you consider Retro games to be garbage, I completely understand your distaste for the company. But I don't think it's fair to fault them for taking extra time with their software projects, especially at a time when so many developers are rushing their products to market.

I don't think they're garbage, the games are definitely on the good side; but I don't think Retro as a studio are as great as people claim. I think they are among the most overrated studios of all time. Thanks for bringing up Team Ico, I almost forgot about them, but the difference between them and Retro is that Retro gets WAAAY more praise and posts about them.

When I think of great studios, I am thinking Rare (from NES to N64), Square (on SNES, PSX, and PS2), Sega on Mega Drive, Nintendo EAD on all systems, etc...

I just had an epiphany (not an apostrophe, as Smee put it in Hook :P).

I saw someone suggest in my "which studio should Nintendo buy" thread that Nintendo should get Warren Spector to form a new studio and run it. That's not what Nintendo should do.

What Nintendo should do is get Warren Spector and David Adams (the main guy from Vigil Games) on board within Retro, and split the studio into two parts, like the way that EAD is split into teams. Warren Spector can run one side, David Adams the other, with Michael Kelbaugh (current head of Retro) remaining above both.

Retro can then work simultaneously on games like Metroid/Zelda/Darksiders under David Adams, and games like Donkey Kong Country Returns/Epic Mickey under Warren Spector. And, as with how EAD works, the teams would be fairly fluid, with members shifting from one side to the other.

Note that Retro, Junction Point Studios and Vigil Games all are/were based in Austin, Texas, making the transition particularly easy for them all.

My guess is they're doing half of Mario Kart U with EAD (have to finish this by Christmas otherwise Wii U is toast) and probably working on something else.

Part of me wants to say Star Fox, but I'm starting to lean back towards an original project.

Retro is one team though, basically. And they also assisted on Mario Kart 7 by the way (they did all the retro courses, no pun intended). 

Rareware was like 5-6 teams, obviously their output would be much larger. The comparision to Square and Sega and Nintendo EAD is even sillier.