i never felt bad when rare left Nintendo, because their talented people went to retro studios

This is not correct.  Nintendo owned 51% of Rare but sold their shares back to them.  Then MS bought 100% of Rare AFTER that.

It's because Nintendo actually playtest the games and make the devs fix things before allowing games to be released.

This was mentioned in Iwata Ask on the Sin and Punishment. I didn't know Nintendo were that strict.

Source?  Every link I've read said that the Stampers had 51%, with Nintendo peaking at 49%.  Nintendo was offered the chance to buy all of Rare before the offer was extended to Microsoft, but they never owned a majority of the company.

Maybe it was 49% and not 51% but my point was that NIntendo sold their shares back to Rare themselves and then MS bought the whole thing.  Nintendo wasn't forced to sell their shares.

Gotcha.

And yes, you're completely correct.  Nintendo had the chance, and deliberately passed.

I wouldn't say Nintendo passed it up willingly.

Probably Microsoft throw a large chunk of cash at Rare and Nintendo didn't think the price was worth it hence they rather just sell the rest of Rare shares.

No.  Well, sort of.

From everything I read, Nintendo had first dibs, and price wasn't really the issue.  They didn't think the price was worth it (see Rol's post, above), but the calculation was based less on "we ain't got the money!" than "eh, pass."

I quite liked Viva Pinata, a far deeper and more difficult game than it a appears on the surface.  I think Rare has some talent (not the best out there, but still pretty good), and I wouldn't count out what they develop.  I havent picked up the last Banjo game but it seemed to get decent reviews and since I'm starting to get the console game feeling again, I might try it out sometime soon.

I give this thread a 9.4.

Rare isn't what they used to be, everybody can agree on that.