Writing off the 360

[rocketpig]

misterd said:

rocketpig said:

Dryden said:

Personally, I wonder where is MS's Mario, Sonic, Crash Bandicoot, or Ratchet & Clank? Where is the good old fashioned platformer?

I couldn't agree more. MS has Rare in their stable. Why the **** are they wasting their time with Perfect Dark games and the like? MS already has Halo, that's all the shooters they need in their first party catalog. Third parties more than make up for the rest and MS' publishing and exclusive system should work well in the shooter world. Shooters are almost always on PC; MS has excellent tools to convert PC games to 360. It's a no-brainer that those shooters will come to the 360 anyway (while not necessarily to the PS3) because they're easy to port and they sell.

Take advantage of Rare, MS. We need more Viva Pinatas, Banjos, Kameos, and Conkers. Unfortunately, two of those IP are new and MS has yet to take advantage of one of Rare's classic franchises outside of the Conker remake.

Who cares if they sell well right off the bat? You'll never get diversity if you don't try to use your talent in the best way possible (and Rare's best talent is obviously no longer in FPS games; PDZ was shit while Viva Pinata was an extremely solid and underrated game).

On the other hand, I do have to give MS kudos for their acquisition of Sakaguchi for the JRPG world. While it might not turn the tide immediately, over the long run it has to help. If you keep producing good games in a genre, sooner or later fans of that genre will be forced to pay attention and buy your system. 

 

Perfect Dark is one of Rare's big IPs (hey! why's my text so big?). It helped fill the need of a known FPS in the launch window, as Halo 3 (and new IP GoW) was over a year away.

Conker (ah! that's better) was a huge disappointment on the N64 (in terms of sales, not quality), and the remake didn't fare well either.

Banjo Kazooie was a hit on the N64, but not a blockbuster, selling less than did Perfect Dark, and I don't believe that Banjo-Tooie even managed to break 1m. There is no real reason to believe BK (whom I love dearly) are adequate mascots to build a console around.

What's left? Blast Corps? Jet Force Gemini? They have even less pull than Conker. Killer Instict? It's been over a decade since the last installment, and a lot of air has done out of the fighting genre since then.

Really when you look at Rare's history, they've always done best (in terms of sales) with other companies' licenses: Goldeneye, Donkey Kong Country, Diddy Kong Racing. They've not had a real hit since Perfect Dark, and even their once spot on quality has proven inconsistent.  It seems to me that more gamers are interested in seeing classic rare games on the VC than they are in any new titles under development. If Banjo Kazooie 3 fails to take off, I wouldn't be suprised to see the the whole company disappear.

 Honestly I'm not sure mascots really matter so much anymore. Crash never really took off as hoped, Sonic couldn't save Sega, and I'm not sure anyone thinks of Jak & Dexter or Ratcher & Clank as the face of the Playstation, the way we do Mario and Nintendo, Sonic and Sega, or Master Chief and Microsoft.

If you re-read my post, I wasn't talking about mascots so much as a diversified game lineup. Rare can make a decent platformer, Kameo wasn't bad and had potential but there should have been a Banjo game in its place.

MS needs some mre platformers.