OXM

Rare's hiring people, and the people it's hiring could be the humble bricks from which next generation gaming excellence is built. Also, there's probably going to be a Kinect Sports 3, crazy as it sounds.

A principal rendering engineer is sought to help "push the boundaries of innovation in entertainment with some amazing new projects". Key accountabilities include the following: "understand, assess and be capable of implementing real-time rendering techniques made possible by DirectX 11". DirectX 11? But Xbox 360 doesn't support DirectX 11, Rare. So either you're crafting a game for PC, or you're working on a new kind of box.

The right candidate will have "previous rendering experience on at least one released AAA title in the current console generation or for high-spec PCs". A previous version of the same job posting links the role to the Kinect Sports series. "Following on from the success of 'Kinect Sports' and its recent sequel 'Kinect Sports: Season Two', Rare is continuing to push the boundaries of the Kinect hardware with our exciting new project."

Rather more excitingly (or depressingly - you choose), the studio is in the market for a new principal producer - also with AAA experience, also for work on "amazing new projects" - who can display "experience around delivering and running online services or free-to-play experiences".

Free-to-play is envisaged by some as the console market's future. Epic's Tim Sweeney told audiences at GDC Taipei that Western disc-based gaming is "far, far behind" Asian business models, suggesting that "some day the virtual economy could be greater than the economy for physical goods."

Not sold? Try this on for size: Rare's also rumoured to be working on a next gen FPS.

Ta,  Kotaku.

Heres hoping Rare is put back to good use.

Rare hasn't made a decent game since Kameo. Even when they weren't reduced to working on Kinect, they were still putting out garbage for Xbox. Letting themselves be bought out by MS was the dumbest decision they ever made, they're on the completely wrong console.

I might buy a NeXtBox just for a new Blast Corps.

download them from XBLA ?! They are 800 points each and come with achievements.

"Rare's also rumoured to be working on a next gen FPS."

That last sentence made up for all other rumors and speculations.

There even was a deal when you bought nuts n bolts you got The XBLA remake for free . I took that offer.

Not to throw cold water on your dreams, but remember that Rare has only put out one FPS since being bought out by M$, and many of the original team members that worked on GE and PD for N64 had already left to form Free Radical (best known for Timesplitters, and they were initially working on SW: Battlefront III before the project got canned).  And that one FPS that Rare has put out since was the mediocre (even for a launch title) PD Zero.

So unless they bring in some serious talent that has experience working on some of the top FPS titles of this past gen, I'm not holding my breath for this rumored FPS to be a killer app.

Hearing 'amazing games' and 'Rare' in the same sentence made me giggle. It's sad, Rare is nowhere near the game company they once were.

I know. But even the mediocre Perfect Dark Zero is an excellent title in my opinion (which I'm still regularly playing). I'm looking at the bright side. The mediocre rating should encourage them to put more efforts into their next FPS (which may be Perfect Dark or whatever). Hopefully, some of the AAA-experienced guys that they are looking for will be working on this project. They shouldn't need previous experiences with Perfect Dark to make a high quality title; the theme and setting is very basic, and so is pretty much everything that made GE and PD timeless. I think they have a similar chance to even improve the series just like how SEGA did with F-zero.

But then again, I'm staying positive.