| Selling Rare to Microsoft in September 2002. |
Around those days Rare's talented devs who worked on GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and DKC had already left Rare to start up their own studios Free Radical. Nintendo bought 49% of Rare but Rare wanted 100%, Nintendo said no because: 1. Rare started to suck and 2. Microsoft always had more money to buy anything they want more than Ninty.
Now you may say 'b ... bu ... but Retro!", but Retro opened in 1999 was supposed to supply Nintendo with *multiple* games in genres like action/sports/shooters at once. That was Howard Lincoln's brainchild.
Retro was supported by Miyamoto. In fact, its thanks to Miyamoto that we even got Metroid Prime cause he was impressed by Retro's "action adventure" engine so he trusted them with the Metroid license. After its succes Metroid Prime Hunters got made by some team of Nintendo of America with Retro's help, even MK7 was made with support from Retro.
Other games like Mario Sports & Party games get made by mostly western studios (owned by Ninty) even the original Star Fox + Adventures + Command and Luigis Mansion 2 were all or in collaboration made by/with western folks. It's not so much of bias, its just the way it is.
Look at Sony, do you think they want to lose the fans of their homeland? because theyre so biased against Japansese devs? No Sony just has more luck and does better bussiness with western studios and Nintendo with Japanese studios. Ninty owns just as much Japanese studios as they own Western but i agree that they usually prefer their Japanese side, like Sony their western side.
