Rare: We don’t need to return to old franchises

[Mr Puggsly]

Scoobes said:

Mr Puggsly said:

Scoobes said:
Didn't most of the older Rare employees leave not long after Microsoft purchased them. It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of the new employees just don't care about the old franchises and would much rather do there own stuff.

I'm not sure the new Rare is even capable of repeating the success of old Rare.

Like they said in the article, timing is very important. Their games in the 90s were considered cutting edge and their style appealed to the Nintendo audience.

The games Rare creates now aren't any worse than their old games. The only reason they aren't successful is because they don't appeal to the 360 audience. Everything they've released on the original Xbox and Xbox 360 would have been more successful on Nintendo consoles.

Right now, I just look at Rare as a pet project of Microsoft. They still fill a gap of the 360 library (XBLA included) and must be proftiable. Perhaps their Natal projects will successful.

From what I've played I'm really not sure that's true. I don't think they would have much more success on Wii or DS than on 360. The games just don't seem to have the charm and quality of previous Rare games. If they were constantly releasing cutting edge material, what's made them release average products now? I don't doubt they're profitable, but why have they been relegated to being a pet project of Microsoft's?

If you look at their previous games you can see quite a range of games and a varied portfolio of sucessful games (both critically and sales-wise). After joining Microsoft they haven't produced anything with the critical and commercial success experienced before. Microsoft's takeover of Rare should be held up to the rest of the industry as how not to do a corporate buy-out.

To be blunt, Rare is competing with high quality developers on the 360. Their games are easily over shadowed by high quality games being released all the time. The same games they've released on the 360 would get a lot more attention on the Wii because they appeal to a younger audience and the Wii has a very weak library aside from 1st party titles. Their games weren't good on the N64 either, there just wasn't much to choose from on the N64.

In a nutsehll, Rare has huge competition on the 360 and they would have little competition on the Wii.

Edit: You should also bear in mind that expectations were much lower in previous generations and are still pretty low on the Wii. Its not that their games have gotten worse, they just aren't up to par with high quality Xbox 360 and PS3 games of today.