Former RARE composer - Microsoft 'f@#$ed' RARE over, ruined the company

[Dodece]

This thread is for the most part sour grapes on the part of die hard Nintendo loyalists. Who think that Nintendo was probably the best thing to happen to Rare, and that Rare was perhaps the best thing that happened to Nintendo on a purely game related basis. The reality is actually the exact opposite. Nintendo ran Rare right into the ground. This is a story of a second party studio that was on the fast track to implosion. It was overextended, over committed, and just plain overworked. Which are basically the ingredients that go into a rapid decline into oblivion.

Rares quality didn't go south with Microsoft's acquisition. The quality was going down years before it came to that, and under the watch of Nintendo no less. Hell I have done the math before, and I can do it again, but it will not change the result. The Rare under Nintendo only scores marginally better then Rare under Microsoft. Yes Rare did start out strong on the 64, but by the end of the generation the developer was putting out far inferior products on the platform, and producing games of that caliber at a greater volume then they did earlier in the generation. It is easy to see the successes, and be oblivious to the failures.

The only real problem with Microsoft's acquisition is that while they stabilized the developer, and prevented its demise. They haven't really been able to revitalize the developer. It is kind of like they bought something that was broken down, and haven't been able to figure out how to fix it up, and as far as I am concerned that is really just a matter of finding the right team leader. You see glimmers of potential out of Rare, but its like the developer is just plain stuck where Microsoft picked it up. There are great ideas there, but nobody to sculpt them into the kinds of games people really want to play.

Anyway it isn't a crime to not be able to fix something. The crime is breaking it in the first place. It really was the problem Nintendo should have solved, or Rare itself should have solved. Microsoft didn't ruin Rare. It was pretty ruined when they got there. Anyway who knows what the future holds. Rare is just one fantastic game away from being back. Anyone else find it odd how far Rare has just fallen off the radar.