Where did I say it has been ruined forever. Notice I said wider audience not different audience. Its a smart business decision to appeal to the "hardcore" and the "casual" and Rare is at the head of M$ "casual". Nothing has been lost on the XBOX platform yet much has been gained.

Low level yes.

10 years ago they were considered like an elite developper.

Now they are developping games or features unrelated to games that everybody could do. They went from an elite studio to a very average one.

Rare has fallen but to be fair, a lot of studios from that time have as well.

Little talked about fact in gaming fandom, development teams are often torn asunder and within a generation or two are unrecognizable. Guys get fired, promoted, quit, etc. Things change, Rare isn't what they used to be but hey, if they aren't completely dead, you can't really count them out. Heck, weren't they were on the verge of collapse back when Nintendo contacted them to do the work on the first KI and DKC?

Rare is at the forefront in vital 'behind the scenes' projects for Microsoft. Just because they aren't used in the same ways as they once were doesn't mean they still aren't still a very talented studio. I miss the old franchises, but i love what they've done to better the experience on Xbox, and the titles they have developed so far this gen have all been great/successful.

I have to side with the topic starter on this one. The Rare I knew and loved is long gone.

Rare consistently made games of the highest quality for the SNES and N64. The same cannot be said for the X360. 

So who here honestly thinks the Rare of today could make a game with the impact that Goldeneye, Banjo, Donkey Kong Country or even Blast Corps had back in the day?

The Rare of today is a different beast, its is just a wing of Microsoft now and does what its told which after a series of failures is a Wii Sports clone.

And then there is this...

 http://mundorare.com/news/2010/07/mundorare-closes/

I think if your fan site bales on you then you must be doing something wrong. 

Rare died many years ago as can be demonstrated by the fact that games they began working on for the N64 and Gamecube (prior to release) were finally released on the XBox 360 after 5 years of development to mediocre reviews ...

What Rare is today is a completely different company that just happens to share the same name. Some people will prefer the new company, or think they're more important, but I don't think anyone would claim that they're related to the Rare of the 1990s at all.

Yeah this.

It's simply a new company.

It makes me sad because they were my favorite developers.

After having gone from making some of the best games of the generation, to making two of the worst sequels of all time (Banjo Kazooie, nuts and bolts, and Perfect Dark Zero) It is obvious that they have fallen. If you disagree with this, you are just plain wrong.

The ONLY thing up for discussion is how low they have fallen.

Maybe Rare hasn't fallen.  They just didn't keep up with the times.  There are better FPS's than anything Rare could have dreamed of.  There are better fighting games available than anything that Rare ever produced (and I was a HUGE Killer Instinct fan).  Even their best platformers were basically Super Mario 64 with better graphics and more collecting.  Star Fox Adventures was  (a GREAT) Zelda clone. 

Maybe time has just passed them by.  Once they were a studio that could make a great game in any genre and provide the absolute best graphics on the market.  Now, there are studios that specialize in one single genre so it's damn near impossible to compete with them in their specialty.  It's becoming harder and harder to be impressed by graphics these days so it's damn near impossible to make people stand up and take notice just because your graphics are great.  Platformers are now a niche genre.  Fighting games are almost niche (despite claims of a fighting game rebirth, only a handful are actually popular/successful). 

Maybe Rare is what Rare is and our opinion is just clouded by memories of a time long gone.  Plus, I suspect Nintendo had a huge hand in making Rare what it was during their heyday........