As a huge Rare fan and an old time Nintendo fan I needed to correct this issue with online judgement. I have been reading a lot lately on how many in the community have been misled to believe MS was the destroyer of Rare LTD. Since MS purchased Rare back in 2002, a lot of the quality has disappeared from what use to be the best in the industry. Well here's a history lesson for those uninformed.

Those who have been around Gaming for many years, through-out the 80s and 90s especially would know that Rare was founded by Tim and Chris Stamper, (Development Legends) and they ran the company through Rare's heydays and gave the company direction. They were the real deals to why Rare were so good.

Well I figured ill dig up some actual info since many seem to have a hard time to accept the fate of a brand and instead just want to do the blame game, because its easy to point the finger.

Quote from Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_(company)

Game development costs gradually increased, and Nintendo did not provide Rare with more capital nor did they purchase the company's remaining stake. According to Rare founders Tim and Chris Stamper, they were surprised that Nintendo did not directly acquire the studio. Rare then looked for potential buyers. In early 2000, workers from Activision and Microsoft began visiting Rare with purchase offers. Rare was interested in Activision's offer, but the deal collapsed and on 24 September 2002 Microsoft purchased Rare for $375 million.

Ex-Rare Employee Gavin Price

https://www.gamereactor.eu/news/301814/ExRare+staff+Microsoft+gave+us+more+freedom+than+Nintendo/

"For me, it was more about [Rare founders] Tim and Chris Stamper leaving. There was no sense of progression about what the company was going to do from that point on. The story people want to hear is that Microsoft came in and destroyed everything. It wasn't like that. They gave us freedom, almost more freedom than Nintendo gave us."

So not only did Nintendo stop funding Rare, they also let them go to be brought out, And with Tim and Chris no longer at Rare as they retired in 2006 that's when the company started to lose its way. Rare has been the object of mistreatment way before MS were involved.

Well there you have it fellow gamers, I probably just broke a few haters hearts, but they will thank me for the education.

Just look how passionate Rare are with Sea of Thieves and their vision of the game. It's obvious they genuinely love their project. And thinking how ambitious and unique the concept is it's quite obvious they were given creative freedom. Game like this sure wasn't a safe beta for Microsoft.

Heh. :)

@op Yeah, it's something I've discussed with friends ages ago, and I'm pretty sure it's been a topic in some form here in the past. Certainly worthy of discussion though, as less worthy thread ideas tend to get recycled pretty quickly around here. I was pretty hard on them even when I had an XB and XB360. Grabbed By The Ghoulies kinda sucked imo, and I felt PDZ, Kameo, were IDK? Average? Even Viva Pinata, while more beloved by critics and fans than the aforementioned games, fell kinda flat with me too. Same with Star Fox Adventures on GC. The last game of theirs I loved, and I did love it, was Perfect Dark.

If what you say is true, then I dont see how MS ISNT at least partially to blame. If the management and guidance at the top left, surely then it is MS's responsibility to provide that guidance.

You have a lot of other good studios who have creative leads and studio heads depart. And a lot of those times you DONT see it affecting the quality of their future outputs (though admittedly in some cases it does). It seems like you are just trying to make excuses.

Bear in mind that i have never played a rare game so am not making a comment on the quality of their games, but simply your argument. 

Nintendo of Japan had no idea how important Rare was to their software library, and refused to fund them or give them creative freedom. GameCube should have had an exclusive FPS from Rare by late 2002. Instead they just let them go. I think Retro Studios is headed in the same direction. They aren't making Metroid Prime 4, that's Namco. They aren't doing anything right now really. Nintendo of Japan will likely just sell them off or let them go soon enough.

The studio still has the same heart like they always have had. They should of never had gone "AAA" with SoT (The game really just has a AAA price tag). But the quality, passion, and ambition for the game is there like we would expect from Rare. Time will tell more with Battletoads coming next year.

By the time Nintendo was letting them go Rare wasn't the same anymore. A very similar thing is happening to Retro now.

With MS, Rare has been all over the place, from really good, to really shallow. I'm sorry that I'm saying this but it's the truth. Nintendo could see clearly that they were not worth the asking price for complete take over. I still don't think they are.

There will always be a soft spot in my heart for Rare. The N64 is my favorite console and part of reason for that was Rare's constant output of good (Jet Force Gemini) to great (Golden Eye) AAA games for that system.

Even Star Fox Adventures was a decent gorgeous looking game. But their woes did start during their GC days. Microsoft paid top dollar for Rare, much more than they paid for bungie ( which in retrospective was a dumb move) during the late 90s early 00s Rare was as highly regarded as Naughty Dog is today. I remember being excited about Microsoft acquiring them until I played Perfect Dark Zero. 

While PDZ looked good, the game played like Halo 1 (or 2) never happened. It felt like playing an HD version of one of their N64 shooters. Then I was underwhelmed by their Banjo game. Rare seemed stuck in the 90s trying to replicate the magic, while competing titles evolved. My guess is that apart from the founders, some of the original staff left and since Nintendo no longer supervised them, the quality of their games took a plunge. 

So Microsoft isn't to blame, in fact they were very high on Rare during the early days. Nintendo no longer working with them might have had a bigger impact. Thankfully Sea of Thieves while not a critical success has been a commercial hit...I guess more than a decade later that gamble MS took on them paid off.

I'm not disagreeing the talent left. But where did they go? We haven't seen a lot of notable come from former Rare people. Yooka Laylee was a disappointment as well.

Also, the Xbox audience isn't the same as the Nintendo audience. They couldn't rest on their laurels and achieve the same success.

Rare had turned to shit before MS bought them; their last game with Nintendo, Starfox Adventures, was rubbish too. They haven't made a good game since the N64.