I thought microsoft had endless supply of money and shouldn't care if one or two games flop, they can take the hit. Anyways, hope all the people affected get back on their feet.

This. Wasn't the KSR team made up of 150 people?

Good thing this isn't a Sony owned studio or we would currently be engaged in a doom fest :p

Sad news though, it's never nice to hear about these sorts of things. I do hope they go back to being "old rare", but at this point I don't think it's possible. They may hold the Rare name, but it's a completely different developer now. That's not to say they can't start making great games, but I think expecting them to become what they used to be again is unreasonable.

Rare is not the Old Rare anyway so I do not care.

Not big layoffs, but it looks like the original staff is all gone. Rare was on life support, now it's dead, except by its name.

Kinect not Knack. I'm sure you know the difference, but baiting is so much fun to some, huh?

We should stop talking about Rare. ( oh man, that's hard.) Rare had its great games but everything should go wrong. Microsoft is not the company for good Jump'n'runs on their consoles. So Rare did something else and it wasn't the worst they could do. (Yeah, I think everything could have become worse) But this time they failed and no one wants a one with Kinect or want to use it in that way.

Even with Nintendo they maybe just would make a Jump'n'run besides tons of others. Maybe. I just think about the great things Rare did and stop talking about them today.

There goes the last shred of old rare...

I knew that it would be a flop way back when it got announced! Idk why companies waste time with casual games like these in the early stages of the console launch cause the only people that buy the console in the early stages are the hardcore and majority of them dont want to play nonsense like Kinect Sports or Wii Fit U and etc

They should have focused on hardcore games until the mid life of the console and then bring in the casual games

Kinect Sports Rivals was a real prime example of being the wrong game at the wrong time. It wasn't there for launch, so it completely missed that boat. And the audience it was targeting mostly seem to have either a) left consoles altogether or b) stuck with the consoles they already owned. Casuals aren't going to pay $599 to play motion control games anymore.

I'm really not sure what Microsoft were thinking with it. It's good that Rare had finally found a focus after years of lurching from one project to another without any real direction; but I feel like a little more thought should've gone into either the release date; or indeed whether it was a smart project to invest in at all. Because 150 people is an absurd amount to put on a game like that.

Aside from that, if Rare were to return to the character-centric platformers that made them their name, then I kinda feel like that would just lead to another round of layoffs tbh. The market for these games outside of Nintendo's consoles just isn't there anymore. Sony try, and there's a small niche that still buys Ratchet/Sly, but aside from that it has really shrunk. Even though I imagine there would be a decent number of nostalgia-buys from people who grew up with them, such a market would be pretty small.

So they're kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. I guess they could massively downsize to start making games to cater to their small but dedicated fanbase. Or they could beef up and try to break into becoming an AAA team. But from where they are right now, things don't look too peachy.  At least MS have the money to keep them chugging along for a while if they so wish.