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

[Scoobes]

Mr Puggsly said:

Scoobes said:

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.

I'm sorry but the games on the N64 were compared to all the greats of that gen on all consoles, (including the great games on the PS1) to the point where many want remakes or remakes are being made via PC mods. They were both critical and commercial successes. Critics review every game on every console and if they reviewed Rare games highly back then I'm inclined to believe they were among the best of that gen.

Even on the Wii the quality of all the first-party titles would so far outshadow the quality of the Rare games currently released I don't see how sales would be significantly higher. Most 3rd-party's complain about the competitions from Nintendo. Expectations might have been lower in previous gens, but that's only relative to what we have now. Most devs like Rare would be improving and should be learning to cope with the changing market especially with the resources Microsoft has at their disposal.

Competition is really a poor excuse as to why they've had such a fall from grace.