Silicon knights did a badass job on Eternal Darkness back in the day...

Isnt Retro supposed to be Nintendo's new RARE?

To be fair, the only RARE game Ive really liked is Goldeneye 007

You forgot to mention Conker's Bad Fur Day. I loved that game.

Rare made some incredible games...
I would by an XBOX One just for a Jet Force Gemoni remake...
And of course the DKC trilogy is iconic...

Well, Rare is a special case. In eight years it turned out a dozen great games, several of them masterworks. That level of quantity and quality in such a short time is incredibly difficult. It was the result of some supremely talented developers, smart management, good funding, strong work ethic, and a healthy, collaborative relationship with Rare's benefactor Nintendo. It was a perfect storm that probably will never be replicated.

That being said, Retro has, in some ways, filled that void. It doesn't produce games with the same frequency, but it does make extraordinary software, and it knows how to handle Nintendo's evergreen IPs.

You only needed teams of 10-20 people to create SNES or N64 games.

Wait, you think that Nintendo has only one second-party developer?

Studios like Game Freak, HAL or Camelot are second-party.

You just can't make retail games at the pace that you used to be able to...It just doesn't work.

You act as if this is done easily, I just counted and Rare released 11 games in 5 years on the N64, to even make 75% of that you would probably need a studio of what, maybe 500 people? Possibly more?

Rare's games were great at the time, but some of their games during the N64 era didn't really age that well (Goldeneye and Jet Force Gemini are good examples of that). Also, they kind of lost their luster after Star Fox Adventures, so it was probably a good thing Nintendo sold their shares to Microsoft and invested in Retro Studios instead.

Can't argue with that. It takes much more resources and manpower these days.