Yes, because that way the leading staff members which made rare what it was, wouldn't have left.

Yep. The problem is that when Microsoft arrived, staff began to left the company. And they forced them to do Kinect games which was a waste of resources.

Microsoft should have hired a totally new bunch of people (it's not like they didn't have the money) and created another company for that and let Rare do whatever they wanted, this way people would have stayed in the company.

I think so yes.
Anyways it doesnt matter anymore.
Rare is a old shell of itself, all its most tallented people have more or less left the company.

Look at playtonic, they keep recruiting more and more of old rare people that are the tallent.
To the point where now, rare isnt the same, as rare of old times.

is that even a question? they would have been SO much better off.

Absolutely.

MS was dumping so much money into Xbox, selling hardware at a massive loss. They had very deep pockets, and thought they were also buying Donkey Kong away from Nintendo in the deal. Was there any chance of Nintendo outbidding Microsoft anyway?

I don't get how people are saying that there was a mass exodus of talent in Rare when Microsoft bought them, it was waaay before that ...

The team behind Golden Eye 007 and Perfect Dark, the two most noteworthy games that Rare has made for the N64 basically left to form Free Radical Design in 1999 to go on and make another great FPS series such as TimeSplitters whereas Rare themselves struggled to live up to the standard set by Star Fox 64 with it's sequel ...

Many of the employees at Rare when Microsoft made it's acquisition reacted positively with it's changes and it wasn't until several years later that Microsoft did restructuring ...

No because Rare would have still made Nuts and Bolts, Perfect Dark Zero and Grabbed by the Ghoulies since they did that on there own and would have been on the weaker Gamecube.

All MS did was push the company into Kinect since they were under preforming so they lost there freedom since they weren't doing themselves justice. Only till now MS has faith in there own imagination with Sea of Thieves.

Nintendo sold them for a reason. Rares fate would have been the same. Remember Rares been around for decades. Rare got old. You cant always be ontop of the food chain.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo should have kept that IPs, if they couldn't keep Rare. Imagine them with Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, and Battletoads. I'm pretty sure they would have a much better time handling the IPs than Microsoft.

If Rare would have remained a second party developer, a Conker sequel would have been made because Nintendo wouldn't have had to publish it. After all, Rare was still publishing their own games. If Rare had been owned by Nintendo, that is a bit more questionable. But it definitely was happening prior to the Microsoft buyout. Also, Starfox Adventures bombed? It sold better than most Starfox games and was a Player's Choice game. It's true it didn't really sell too many GameCubes but it still sold well enough on it's own. The creative strength and marketing strength is based on NIntendo and Rare's already existing relationship. That wouldn't have changed. There wouldn't have been a reason for it to change. Up until 2001, most of everything Nintendo and Rare collaborated on sold well and was well recieved. The only game that didn't sell well was Jet Force Gemini and it didn't even sell badly, just below expectations. After 2000, Conker and Starfox were the only games Rare released on Nintendo consoles and Conker was the only game that seriously bombed. The reason Conker bombed was because it had everything going against it.

I also know for a fact that Grabbed by the Ghoulies was in development for the GameCube and after it was moved to Xbox, the development was rushed in order to meet it's late 2003 deadline. The developers had said that there was more that they wanted to do with that game. That's just one example of how one game would have been different under Nintendo.

YES!!! PLEASE NINTENDO!