I am not here trying to stick up for MS on this one. They could have managed Rare better however it seems many still like to point the blame game solely on MS because that's when Rare had there major declines. The truth that a lot of people seem to miss is that Rare wanted out from Nintendo hence they were looking for a buyer. They need support and cash and Nintendo just weren't doing that for them anymore. Which is a shame because when Rare and Nintendo were firing on all cylinders they were unstoppable. Sega, Nintendo's arch rival did not have a counter to Rare neither did Sony.

If people try to bring up "MS killed Rare" we should link them this thread.

Yeah, I think Nintendo's conservatism didn't work with Rare's ambition. It was time for a split.

It worked out well for both entities. Nintendo spent its money on Retro Studios in 1998 -- a smaller, more cost-effective studio that turned in several all-time great games -- and Rare got a large corporation to subsidize its larger-scale projects. 

But my point was, basically, that anyone who's paying attention knows that Microsoft didn't "kill" Rare. It just overpaid for, and then failed to improve or inspire, what had become, by 2003, a middle-of-the-road studio.

This wouldn't be a big deal if MS had some merit to their first party studios.

The reason people blame Microsoft is because they bought all those IPs and did nothing good with them. o many franchise buried.

Why buy all a studio with all those IPs if you don't want to grown those IPs? Clealry all the talent left before the purchase so that is the only logical sense when they bought them. They wanted those IPs.

You also don't want them to destroy them either. Make the games when there is something good to make. I can sort of understand why they didn't just jump into the IPs straight away. KI took a long time but finally hit with good success. I like to see more of that and it seems Battletoads is next on there radar *Fingers crossed*

In my opinion I would much rather wait for something good than just release and devalue the IPs by making them mediocre. I think if anything MS played it safe with the IPs because they know they have some of the richest and colourful line-up of games that gamers want. A bit like Valve with Half Life 3, they can easily make it just to shut the fans up but Valve know there sitting on a gold mine IP that when released at the right time can rake in a fortune.

Yer but its been like what 10plus years for some of them.

I agree KI looked good but i did not like the way they released it. The whole episode approach. What turned me off Microsoft this generation was when the Halo collection come out and you still needed to download 20GB to make part of one of the games work. Now if you going to sell a huge anniversary collection the whole content shoudl be there.

Didn't they spend like 2 billion advertising kinect ?And didn't they only pay 50m for gears? 

Very interesting and i am curious to what they still bring to the table. I wouldnt be suprised if its a small game.

Well to be fair, thats more on Rare not MS. They attempted Perfect Dark and Banjo Kazooie. They just didnt know what to do with the IPs since the leads left.

KI could have released with more content but thats expected for a launch title, but no excuses, they could have waited. Also KI was a solid reboot of a legendary IP and Rares Replay is one of the best collections of games going around.

They spent $3b just on Minecraft.

I'm seeing articles claiming $500 million on Kinect advertising. However, that was essentially a 360 relaunch and holiday advertising. The Kinect and 360 sold really well that year.

I see no estimate for Gears of War, only a guess by Pachter for $100 million. In my opinion, $50-$100 million is reasonable for an IP that successful. The series has generated significantly more than that.