I thought they had defunct. How does a game company not release a game in 6 years and still pay wages?

Because Nintendo.

The important thing to focus with this kind of news is the interior design. I know that its common to always go for modern/minimalistic furnishing, but im a bit bored of that, I think it wouldnt hurt for a studio to go a bit more calssical baroque style. I know its more expensive, and I dont think Retro Studios are doing that well for themselves to pull that off tho, I mean, when was the last time they released a game?

I wonder what they have been working on for the last 6 years though. Barre a simple Wii u port that looks identical to original.

There is that robot game that I think might have been canned Retro was working on. In a Retro signed poster given to Reggie when he retired he covered up one part and we saw a robot arm not belonging to any known game. We know they are working on Metroid now but maybe they have 2 games in development.

I don't know, ask Bend Studios, they went 7 years without making a game after making a card game (which wasn't even entirely made by them but co-developed), and 8 years without making an actual game. Or the team behind The Last Guardian, a game that started in 2007 and didn't release until 2016, breaks in-between to be kept in-mind. Or Sucker Punch studios, which was super productive in 2014 and didn't release another game till 2020, almost 6 years later. Or even Santa Monica, which took 5 years just to make another God of War game (after Sony almost rejected their proposal, mind you).

At least Retro made their own port and didn't start on Metroid Prime 4's development until late 2018/early 2019. I have no idea what the excuse for those companies would be when they only worked on one game for that entire length, whereas at least Retro has presumably worked on Metroid Prime 4, a port, and a most-likely now cancelled game project, in those 6 years.

Retro also had a small hand in Mario Kart 8, I think? So if ports count as 1/10 of a game, then they have released 15/100ths of a game in the past six years!

look at their homepage, 1st news update 2105?

Nope, that was Mario Kart 7 I'm pretty sure. 

HOWEVER ... we can say 7 inspired 8 so in a way they made THREEEEE more games! Mwahahahahaha! 

the last thing we officially know was that in 2014 they were working on a new game after tropical freeze, but other than that there's been nothing but different rumors and "leaks" over the years of what they've been working on, ranging from them working on a new IP that got cancelled to working on Star Fox Grand Prix which nobody really knows if that was ever real or not though I wish it was ;_;

would love to know the full story of what happened during those years eventually