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

[Dodece]

I actually did a comparative analysis of Rare a couple years ago, and I would rather not do so again. I have far more productive things I could be doing with five or six hours of my life. Then running down decade old ratings. Followed by tedious number crunching. That said if memory serves me right, and it usually does serve me right. The Rare of the 64 generation had a average score in the mid eighties, and in Xbox generations it has had a averages score in the low eighties.

Microsoft basically still has what it got when it bought Rare. A slightly above average to good developer. The only real change has been in the area of volume, but that is explained by the fact that Rare doesn't just develop games for their platforms. They aren't simply a dedicated game developer anymore, and it is likely that Microsoft always intended to have them doing more anyway.

Rare started out strong in the 64 generation, but as the tempo increased the quality decreased. This isn't any kind of a opinion on my part. If you want proof go pull up a release list, and go down it chronologically cross checking the review scores for the games. This is a developer that went from making a Blastcorps early in a generation to making a Mickeys Speedway near the end of the same generation. My point being that Microsoft had nothing to do with that at all.

Look I was a avid Rare gamer, and I can tell you those reviewers weren't wrong. The games near the end of that generation were not as good as earlier in the generation. Hell in a lot of ways they were pretty bad, and yeah at the time I was pretty disappointed in Rare. You can argue it was Nintendo that caused the problems, or Rare did it all to itself, or even in some twisted way it was the press and players that were wrong. What is not right however is blaming the guys who weren't even remotely involved.

I suspect that a lot of this commentary is coming from players that only played the early games on the 64, and for whatever reason didn't stick around to watch the second half. I also suspect that most commenting in this thread were oblivious to the fact that Rare was still developing games for Nintendo platforms as late as 2008. I am not saying these things to defend Microsoft, but I am sick of the rose colored glasses some members on this forum insist on wearing. Microsoft didn't destroy Rare. The studio was pretty much destroyed by the time they got there.

The Rare you adore wasn't there anymore when the company changed hands. That isn't saying it cannot become something great in the future. It just hasn't been great for a time longer then Microsoft has owned it outright. It also should be said you probably shouldn't put too much stock into what former employees have to say, because chances are a lot of them had a lot to do with bringing the developer down in the first place. If you were likely a big part of that. Wouldn't you try to distance yourself from your own personal failures, or even try to blame that other guy for what went wrong. It is kind of strange that it is always somebody else who is at fault.

Anyway yeah Rare is just one great game from being back, but that has less to do with a fair appraisal, and more to do with the attention span of gamers. How many times do we read comments like this developer is just a great developer. Even though they have only made all of one game. I mean as a group we don't necessarily have the highest of standards.