It was a sad day in the early 2000s when Microsoft bought out childhood-memory-makers Rare Ltd, the company behind Donkey Kong Country, Battletoads, Konker's Bad Fur Day, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, and much, much more. Since their acquisition, the company has slid into obscurity, and while it is no secret that a major reason for that was poor management of the developer by Microsoft, a recent issue of Retro Gamer magazine shed a bit more light on the subject.

Reportedly, Rare had begun production on a slew of games throughout their time at Microsoft, including Crackdown 2, Kameo 2, and a completely abandoned IP called Black Widow, all of which had been promising in their early development. Microsoft, however, wanted Rare to prioritize making games for their miserable first generation Kinect. They also pushed for Rare to make the games they'd always made, but without keeping into account the audience for those games. Namely: those who grew up playing Rare games probably were not the ones playing Xbox games with a Kinect.

Some of the highlights of the interview with Phil Tossel are:

He spent several months working on a an early version of Crackdown 2 and has a particular affection for Black Widow, an aborted first-person shooter featuring a spider mech and an ingenious 'jump-and-gun' mechanic.

 Coding also commenced on a sequel to Kameo. 'We wanted to age it up a bit,' Phil explains. "The monsters were more grown-up and, for Kameo, we lost the googly eyes and now she could morph into an eagle. We wanted this epic feeling of looking down as she flew over this huge world.

 Kameo 2 was given the go-ahead and was looking very promising when, after a further three months in production, it was abruptly shelved. The reason? Microsoft decided to focus all of Rare's attention to its great waving hope, the Kinect.

 'I think we were handed a poisoned chalice, ' he says, wearily. 'We were being asked to make the games we'd always made for an audience that didn't want those sort of games. The reason we did Black Widow, Crackdown and aged up Kameo was because we were trying to bridge that gap but Microsoft wouldn't let us.'

http://www.gamnesia.com/news/rare-ltd.-talks-about-microsoft-mismanagement

Oh rare, how I  miss thee.
And Konker? Wasn't it Conker? :P

Just looked up Tossel. Apparently he joined Rare at the tail end of Diddy Kong Racing and left after the completion of Kinect Sports. Just in case people are wondering.

I have no doubt Microsoft mismanagement helped contribute to the decline of Rare, but I think it's unfair to place the blame solely on the technology giant. I think it was a combination of several things, including mismanagement, the dissolution of the partnership with Nintendo, and the loss of creative talent after the acquisition by Microsoft.

Never forget. Never touch (console) Microsoft.

Stuck with Kinect

Why didn't Nintendo buy them?

because Microsoft did first, for $375 mil

Nintendo just didn't believe in them that's why.

Rare wanted more money to make games, Nintendo didn't want to pay. Microsoft did. 

OT: I really wish they had finished Kameo 2, I loved the first one. Playing a demo of it was one of the reasons I bought an Xbox 360.