I suspect they have multiple games to be revealed and release within a few years of each other. Their cycles got all mixed up, so instead of releasing a new game every 2-3 years, they are gonna release 3 games in 3 years or something, before going back into deep hibernation for 6 years lol. If this is the case, Nintendo probably knows they will be a money generator for end of Switch, beginning of Switch 2 life cycle and are okay investing in them.

There is no doubt that a lot of talent has left Retro Studios in the last decade but that is not to say that new talent cannot be rapidly regained if Nintendo invests an appropriate amount into the company, which it sounds like has been happening since the MP4 reveal in early 2019. I am sure that a lot of top notch developers who worked on recent AAA FPS games would love to be a part of MP4.

As for what Retro has been up to for the past 6 years, well before 2018, I suspect that Retro was used heavily has an undeclared contributor in BotW, Galaxy and likely the Splatoon and/or MK8 ports for the Switch. Nintendo fans don't like to admit just how much of a near death experience Nintendo experienced between the years of 2014 and 2017. We have never seen a year that was as loaded with AAA Nintendo content as the Switch's launch window was especially when we consider that we are now in the world of HD gaming and what used to take Nintendo 1-2 years of development now takes 5 years plus. Nintendo pulled out everything it possibly could to make the Switch's launch as successful as it could be and it paid off. That being said, I guarantee that any under-utilized talent that Nintendo had control over was pulled in to help perfect their key releases. I am sure that Retro was being used on multiple of these titles. Remember how people complained in 2014 how empty BotW open world looked? I am sure that Nintendo had Monolith, Retro and any other assets that they control outside the EAD teams just working to populate regions of the BotW game map.

Atleast we knew what those studios were working on though before the games launched. We had E3 footage or hands on of all those games running years before they released. Retro has been completely silent. 

We have no idea what they are working on, but they sure are working on it.

The Retro question is not helped by 2020: frankly we could have been due for a E3 reveal that went bust as a result of Corona. At the very least this should help kill those 'Retro closed' rumors from a while back.

Personally if I was Nintendo at this stage of the life cycle, I would probably get Retro to experiment/focus on building a new engine for Switch 2 that supports DLSS 2.0 and release MP4 on there. Who knows maybe Retro/Nvidia already involved with that and ironing out even DLSS 3.0. Retro are great at optimising things to the fullest on a Nintendo system so this could be a way to make a great tool for Nintendo to give to smaller devs to get the best outcome for Switch 2.

Just 500k? That is barely enough to buy a house in certain areas. How does that translate to proper development accommodations?