It isn't stupid to kill a franchise from milking? Ok then. You probably also think it's better to demand a dev to work on something against their will than to let they challenge themselves and get something even bigger.

By my logic if disney team wants to make more StarWars do it, but if the team doing it doesn't want to do, the result will be bad. And anyway for me SW is really only 4-6, the other ones I watch but care very little.

But as I said, if they want to keep making Halo and their userbase want to buy it, do it... funny although is how many times it was supposed to end with a specific game but they just gone and kept going. That means a company that have no capacity to create new things.

Why don't all movies are only sequels from the ones that made success on the 50's? Why aren't all books sequels until the writer dies? Per your reasoning when you do something that sell you should stuck yourself to do it.

And again I just provided you points that when MS do a franchise that sells good the dev is tied to it, which is what you try to deny, but then go and prove that it's what they do.

As always, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. There's evidence out there suggesting team leads are given a lot of leeway, and also evidence, in the case of Lionhead or Black Tusk, of Microsoft meddling.

In the case of Rare, however, which is at the heart of this thread, there seems to be a clear history of Microsoft being hands-off, often to the detriment of the finished product.

How would you rate Rare's performance this gen?

According to Wikipedia, the studio currently has around 200 workers.

For the Xbox One they have released:

• Killer Instinct (0.11)
• Kinect Sports Rivals (0.62)
• Rare Replay (0.88)

What does Sea of thieves have to do with Banjo or Conker? I think its going to bomb hard

Right now, Rare is decent at best. Its last great game was 17 years ago. Rare Replay is one hell of a collection, but it's just that -- a collection.

Sea of Thieves is a "put up or shut up" moment for the company. Personally, as an XOne owner and a Rare fanatic growing up, I hope it turns out to be a great.

All that said, I do not think Rare ever made a mediocre game because some exec at Microsoft pushed the studio to do X when it wanted to do Y. I think Rare made some questionable design decisions on its own, and Microsoft was either unwilling or unable to steer them toward greatness. 

There's a line of thinking going around that pushes a lot of the blame on publishers, but I think that narrative will start changing. Studio leads are often responsible for screwing up their own products or introducing ugly business practices. I'm inclined to agree with Mat here: 

Some of the most aggressive mtx ideas I’ve ever heard have come from devs, while some of the most adamant pushback on mtx I’ve see has come from people at pubs. This idea of the big bad publisher and victim dev is, in my experience, a myth. https://t.co/5UZAESFVAr

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 13, 2017

MTX???

But I agree that devs aren't victim as I also think workers usually aren't victims. They have internal policies to follow or can look to work at a place that have policies they want or they can open their own company.

Huh?

Your wrong.

1st - MS isnt milking the franchise, they claimed the Halo franchise has over 10 years of content. Halo has a huge following and they want more games made. 

2nd - 343i was created to sololy make Halo games for there fans and audience

3rd - No one is complaining Halo is being milked. Do you know what games Nintendo have been making for the past 30 years? Exactly. 

Killing off games because you think milking them to death is bad only works on franchises that gamers dont want. 

Sony do it with Polyphony with GT

ND did it with Uncharted

Nintendo do it with Mario, Zelda and Pokemon etc

The big differences between MS compared to Sony and Nintendo is they build dedicated companies to keep series going without locking devs in for life. Bungie was a unique case because Halo makes too much money which Sony and Nintendo would have done the same.

Rare is not a dedicated company built from the ground up to support SoTs. They will probably support it until it dies than make something new.

Killer Instinct was made by other studios, notably Double Helix and Iron Galaxy Studios, Rare had some small amount of input however.

Rare Replay is just a repackaging of a heap of old games, Microsoft's other development teams that are responsible for building the Xbox 360 emulators did the bulk of the hard work IMHO.

And that leaves Kinect Sports Rivals... Yuck.

At least last generation Rare gave us some solid games like Kameo, Banjo Kazooi Nuts and Bolts, Viva Pinata and I even enjoyed my stint through Perfect Dark: Zero.
I mean... None of those games were genre defining like Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong, Perfect Dark and so on... But they were still solid titles.

Rare has some great talent at their studio, it's a shame Microsoft doesn't leverage it more and give them more resources.

"Microsoft doesn't have enough exclusives or new ip" it's true and constantly repeated on these forums. In amazed that even though microsoft is checking both boxes here, it's being spun into a negative about how old ip not being rebooted...

Not to mention this releases a once great dev from pumping out Kinect only games...