jarrod on 26 May 2010
Rare tried to go 3rd party back in 1998. Nintendo freaked out, bought into the company, let them start self-publishing games and built them a new state-of-the-art HQ. Then 4 years later Nintendo sold them off to one of their their competitors.
Nintendo also divested their interests in Silicon Knights and Leftfield Productions last gen, who then went on to make games for rival formats. They've been pretty reluctant to invest directly in western studios since then, though they've been throwing cash around like crazy in Japan the past several years starting up and buying out studios, beefing up their own internal studios and working directly with select 3rd party partners.
