I think when Nintendo negotiated their original deals with the stamper bros. it was important for both of them that Rare retained their creative independence. Nintendo wanted to keep a level of financial and directorial sway. Therefore a 51/49 split was a good association. Of course this means the stampers were free to do what they wanted (within reason), including selling up their controlling stock. When MS owned more than half, there certainly was a conflict of interest amongst the two owners, so Nintendo sold up (as was probably a requirement).

Nintendo was given the option to buy Rare and Nintendo laughed at them and sold them back their stock.

Rare was a Money pit, Nintendo dumped lot of money into them with very little return. It wasn't worth keeping them. Especially with most of the talent gone. The only games that brought in any money for Rare were Nintendo owned series and Nintendo could do those them selves.

Nintendo Owned:
Diddy Kong Racing: 4.88
Donkey Kong 64: 5.27

MGM Owned:
GoldenEye 007: 8.09

Rare Owned:
Perfect Dark: 2.52
Banjo-Kazooie: 3.65
Banjo-Tooie: 1.50
Blast Corps: 0.17
Jet Force Gemini: 1.16
Perfect Dark Zero: 1.16

I can't find sale figures for Killer Instinct Gold, StarFox Adventure or Conker's Bad Fur Day

Rare, since being sold hasn't preformed in the least bit which could be considered ideal either. Their glory days were those of the N64.

It was my second favorite company in the N64 days. A title that is now Capcom`s.

What is this, 2002 again? I feel like I'm in high school and arguing with people who hate Feidler.

Rare is your special ops. You give them more money, more resources, and send them your trickiest jobs, but they're worthless without regular troops. SNES was a great place for Rare, because the weight wasn't on their shoulders. N64 was much harder, because other than the first-party stuff, Rare was about all you had. X-box was even worse because the first-party support was weaker, and the third-party support didn't compensate enough. If Rare can get their act together again, they might see some sort of reclamation of dominance on the 360, which seems to have more strong software than X-box, but after the last 5 years, I'm not holing out much hope.

Nintendo selling Rare was possibly one of, if not the, most ingeniously profitable moves in the history of this business.

Even after Microsoft retained full ownership of the company, Nintendo did not cease getting support from them in the form of GBA or DS titles, all of which have been much much more successful than all of their Xbox and 360 games combined. And add to all this that Nintendo no longer had to pay Rare employees or maintain the building they worked in and all that jazz, Microsoft basically paid Nintendo to make a profit.

Banjo Kazooie could have gone the way of crash or spyro if it stayed with Nintendo and had 3 or so games on the GC...it would have gotten stale.

I suppose one good thing out of all of this is that Banjo Threeie actually seems promising, because it's the first Banjo game in forever...

Ok, so Nintendo let them go becuase they were losing money on them. I see. Makes sence. So Nintendo just took over their original IPs and let them go.

I ask beecuase I was thinking that Rare characters would be cool in Brawl, and that led to me wondering why they were let go in the first place.

I've been waiting a long time for that game. This is Rare's best chance for redemption since they moved to Microsoft. If they screw this up, Rare is sure to damnation.

All the rare games (after N64 period) that I played sucked.