I suggest doing some research before posting because quite a lot of you are factually incorrect.
A few lead developers left during perfect dark, but rare still went on to release star fox adventures and conquers bad fur day.
When Nintendo didn't make any moves to become a majority owner of Rare, and was no longer giving Rare an unlimited development budget to work with, they began looking around for someone to purchase the company. It wasn't until formal discussion between Rare and Activision, and Rare and Microsoft started that made 30 employees jump ship (from a development team of around ~200). Rare wasn't dying before they were purchased, and they still had a tremendous amount of talent still around at the time. But here, have this
Nintendo Era:
Donkey Kong Country 1
Donkey Kong Country 2
Donkey Kong Country 3
Killer Instinct
GoldenEye 007
Didn't Kong Racing
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
Perfect Dark
DK64
Conkers Bad Fur Day
Star Fox Adventures
Microsoft era:
Grabbed By The Ghoulies
Conker: Live & Reloaded (a remake of the original)
Perfect Dark: Zero
Kameo: Elements of Power
Viva Piñata (after this, the founders left.)
Viva Piñata: Trouble In Paradise
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Kinect Sports
Kinect Sports: Season 2
Kinect Sports: Rivals (after this, 15 people laid off)
Rare Replay (a compilation of games that were made while NOT under Microsoft lol)
Sea of Thieves
*Lists are not comprehensive and only include at least somewhat notable titles.
It's obvious to me that Rare was doing way better before Microsoft. Under Microsoft, their most successful title has been a Kinect game. With that in mind, how much of a cult following do the games from the first list have vs the latter? Which ones do people post about with fond memories? I see people reminisc on the old Rare games all the time. I don't remember ever seeing anyone talk about how much they miss viva piñata or grabbed by the Ghoulies. On top of the lack of a hit over the past 15 years, they were creatively constrained, marketed poorly and this eventually culminated in being banished to Kinect only titles.
Sea of Thieves will be their first real game in some time. This could mark a comeback, I think the game looks interesting but that's purely speculation for now. It's almost objective that rare was in an all around better spot while they worked with Nintendo. Almost. But opinions are like assholes.
