Yesterday, the news leaked that Rare had cut staff.  Many thought it was due to the poor sales of Kinect Sports Rivals.

What I find the most annoying about this is the message it sends to the XB1 owners or prospective owners.  Sure, I get that games need to launch on time (Rivals was delayed 6 months) and they need to sell when they do release (Rivals - not so much).  BUT, when you reduce staff at the same time that you are talking about how you are focused on the GAMES, it doesn't seem to match up.  Also, does this indicate that there will be even less support for Kinect games in the future (Obviously)?

This all adds up to less commitment to games to me…

It means they want to be profitable.

Perhaps not everytime, but it wouldn't be fair after all the Sony threads to stop when it affects MS

I hope it leads to less kinect games. People don't want them and I'd love for Rare to make something else.

To me it means, Rare has been under performing for a while now, and Sports Rivals was the last time.

Laying of 16 people isn't a big thing at the end of a project, but these were all high level staff, which points to MS restructuring the studio as a helper studio to come in and add resources to there other bigger more successful studios who need help meeting deadlines.

I would not be surprised if another Rare game is not announced for a very very long time.

As im one of the biggest, if not the biggest Rare supporter on this forum ill give you my input.

I wanted to buy KSR specifically for this reason. I knew if it would sell poorly it could hurt rare, but in the end i decided not to buy it so it would show Rare to stop focusing on Kinect. The focused on Kinect primarily because KS1 and 2 sold so well, you cant really blame them. NOw theyre seeing times are changing and they need to go back to the core.

What i do get annoyed by is people sayign their talentless which isnt true. KS actually is a good game for what it is, just not what core gamers want. Viva Pinatas and Kameo were great last gen and then you have Banjo Nuts and Bolts which id compare to an expaning game similar to how mario expands yearly. Perfect Dark Zero was also good. My point is, they have talent and now that they see that gamers want core games they will get back on track on making those games people love

From the sounds of things from both Rare and MSFT they will be re-focusing on the core which is a good thing. No worries

Does Intel closing whole fabs mean they're less commited to semiconductors?

There you have your answer. It's called business.

No, it just means that they think these people aren't as useful for the future of Rare as other people are who are still with Rare. It also doesn't even mean that the staff will be smaller since they could try to find new people for these positions (could, no clue if they do). But it could mean less Kinect and more other games (which most gamers asked for, right?) if these people where "specialized" in Kinect suff. 

And if you think that this shows the opposite of what they say right now with "commitment to the gamers", what do you think about Sony who fired or lost some staff for some of their studios but their ads say "this is for the players"?

Any Rare devs of old that were remaining have now seen the writing on the wall. MS has not, and will not let them be the same studio that produced Banjo Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and DKC.

The studio it is today doesn't even deserve the legacy of the name Rare!

They may be retooling staff for non-Kinect commitments.