Would Rare have been better off with Nintendo?

[Jon-Erich]

Seventizz said:

Jon-Erich said:

Conker Live & Reloaded wouldn't have happened but that's only because the Conker sequel would have. It is known knowledge that Chris Seavor was already in the early stages of working on the next Conker game despite the low sales of Bad Fur Day. The entire storyboard and initial planning for the game had already been completed. The reason the sequel never saw actual development was because of the Microsoft buyout. Microsoft felt that Bad Fur Day just had a run of bad luck and decided it needed another chance on Xbox. When Live and Reloaded failed to generate sales, that's when the sequel was cancelled for good. As for everything else you said, I would argue that Rare's best efforts under Microsoft was Viva Pinata.

The big question is would Rare have been better off with Nintendo? In my opinion, from a marketing perspective, yes. Nintendo knew how to sell Rare's games. Rare knew how to make games that would sell on Nintendo consoles. When Microsoft bought Rare, they looked at Rare as an equivilent of a third party developer and thought their games would sell well no matter what. The thing is, by that point, people bought Nintendo consoles for Nintendo games AND Rare games. So the people who wanted Rare's games already bought a Game or were planning to buy a GameCube. Also, Microsoft had no idea how to market these games. They depended on Rare to figure it out. That collaboration that Rare had with Nintendo wasn't there with Microsoft, but not because Microsoft didn't care. It's because they were still learning.

From a creative perspective, again, Rare would have been better off with Nintendo. Many people argue about the importance of creative freedom. What we don't about so much is when to intervene and when not to intervene. For the most part, Nintendo left Rare to do what they wanted. Occassionally, Nintendo would step in and intervene. For the most part, it was for the better and the games sold better as a result. With Microsoft, since they were new at publishing, their first reaction was to leave Rare alone. Unfortunately, that collaboration was no longer present. Then when that strategy didn't work, Microsoft then went to the other extreme and started cancelling projects left and right. Under Microsoft's leadership, Rare has cancelled more games than what they have released. 

To be fair though, an ownership under Nintendo or a continued partnership would not have been perfect. Keep in mind that prior to the Microsoft buyout, many talented people had already left Rare. Rare was still understaffed and an investment and expansion of Rare would have been needed. The transition to the 6th generation would have been rough no matter who their owner was. But I think in the long term, Rare would have been better off with Nintendo and all the people who left Rare afer the Microsoft buyout would be there right now. 

Agree to disagree.  There's no proof a Conker sequel would've been greenlit by Nintendo, from a critical and marketing perspective - Star Fox Adventures bombed and didn't move any GameCubes, and creative strength?  Come on.  You can't forecast that.  Nintendo 3rd party input didn't make Geist, Devil's Third, or Die Hard Vendetta very good games - did they.

 

The question posed in this thread simply can't be answered without a magical crystal ball - and that doesn't exist.

If Rare would have remained a second party developer, a Conker sequel would have been made because Nintendo wouldn't have had to publish it. After all, Rare was still publishing their own games. If Rare had been owned by Nintendo, that is a bit more questionable. But it definitely was happening prior to the Microsoft buyout. Also, Starfox Adventures bombed? It sold better than most Starfox games and was a Player's Choice game. It's true it didn't really sell too many GameCubes but it still sold well enough on it's own. The creative strength and marketing strength is based on NIntendo and Rare's already existing relationship. That wouldn't have changed. There wouldn't have been a reason for it to change. Up until 2001, most of everything Nintendo and Rare collaborated on sold well and was well recieved. The only game that didn't sell well was Jet Force Gemini and it didn't even sell badly, just below expectations. After 2000, Conker and Starfox were the only games Rare released on Nintendo consoles and Conker was the only game that seriously bombed. The reason Conker bombed was because it had everything going against it.

I also know for a fact that Grabbed by the Ghoulies was in development for the GameCube and after it was moved to Xbox, the development was rushed in order to meet it's late 2003 deadline. The developers had said that there was more that they wanted to do with that game. That's just one example of how one game would have been different under Nintendo.