Banjo-Kazooie 3 coming late 2008

[NightDragon83]

The problem with Microsoft putting Rare games on XBLA isn't just with licensing issues such as Goldeneye and the James Bond license...

When Rare was under Nintendo, Nintendo published ALL of Rare's games, not just the ones they collaborated on like the DKC series... ever boot up a Rare game on N64?  Not only are you treated to a shiny Rare logo, you're also greeted with the spinning N logo of the N64 signifying that its a Nintendo published game.  So basically what that means is while Rare owns the rights to the characters and properties of such games as Banjo and Perfect Dark, Nintendo has the publishing rights since those games were made specifically for their system.

 And then theres the fact that since those games were on N64 hardware - which again Nintendo owns the rights to obviously - Microsoft and Rare can't simply just slap a direct port onto XBLA and call it a day, they'd have to...

A. License the use of the N64 hardware for XBLA, which let's face it that's prolly not gonna happen as Nintendo

    would never let a competitor have the right to use their own hardware/software.  Or... 

B. Basically reprogram the games specifically for XBLA which would cost a little time and money but gets around situation A.   This is probably what they did with Goldeneye, but then again we come back to the whole publishing issue, where Nintendo stepped in and probably said something to the effect of "Well if you're gonna put and updated and reworked version of games like Goldeneye on your online service, we want the original versions on ours or else!"

So here's what i predict is gonna happen in the next few months... Microsoft and Nintendo will announce some sort of compromise where Rare games originally developed on Nintendo systems will come to VC while Rare and Microsoft will be free to put all the Rare properties that Nintendo originally published on XBLA, and I'll also wager that part of that deal will be that Rare can continue developing on  the DS and also on Wii Ware too.  (I doubt though that Microsoft would allow Rare to develop on Wii itself but time will tell.)

And back on topic, I've been waiting for BK3 for 8 years now and it's one of my most anticipated games of '08... but MY GOD those character models look like something out of a bad computer animated kids show on network television... stick with the originals dammit!