| Dodece said: 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. |
I have a few issues with this post in that it seems horribly biased pro-Microsoft, and that there are things about it I just don't understand. Also, to be honest, most of the posters here have been bringing links and external sources to the table to try to understand what happened so there's no need for "This thread is for the most part sour grapes on the part of die hard Nintendo loyalists. ..." At best, there has been a bad attitude from the defense side of the debate.
Here's what I'd like you to clarify:
1) What are the games on the N64 that were showing a downward trend in quality? What were these games and what was the volume? To note, I'm talking on the N64.
2) The crime isn't breaking it. You don't know what happened inside for that to happen, and I'd be shocked to know it had anything to do with money. Nintendo used Rare's talent to output games. All we know is that, at some point in time after CBFD, Rare a) wanted to work on an IP of its own (Dinosaur Planet), and b) was put to work on Gamecube projects. What we know of point b) is that there may have been lots of Research going on that led to poor results. Possibly Rare was at a point where they did not want to follow Nintendo's tight lead anymore and decided to do things their way, upon which we didn't get the same volume as prior. And that's where Nintendo felt that it was time to let them go to a new partner. That was my understanding of the Nintendo-Rare situation. So, instead of buying back shares, they decided to give them up to the highest bidder. Now what Microsoft did was much more shameful, because yes they let Rare do what they wanted and injected money into them, but when Rare failed, instead of stooping in and holding their hand through their failures, they just brutally restructured them in a way that obliterated all the creative direction they initially had and put Rare to make things to purely profit MS regardless of creative output. It's sad. There was an in-between solution which wasn't implemented. So to say 1) it's a problem that Nintendo should have solved is a gross misunderstanding of what took place. Nintendo couldn't DO anything anymore, Rare wasn't interested anymore, and to say 2) Microsoft didn't ruin them is also a gross misunderstanding of the options MS had to address a situation within a studio they had newly bought, a studio with which it was still possible to mend any broken bones.
And Rare is not one fantastic game away from being back, they're gone. If they make a new game, it will be neo-Rare, not Rare. Rare as it was is now dead.
