....says Peter Moore in interview with Guardian's games blog. Their headline refers to it as a "a damning indictment of UK developer, Rare", though it reads more like a solemn acknowledgment of changing consumer tastes, with a little regret over MS's inability to read those changing tastes.
So are Rare-styled games openly rejected by the public now, or is he just making excuses for them when the problem is the platform and its audience? Is it just impossible to create new cartoony mascot-type stuff that sells really well? It's difficult to launch franchises in just about any genre, so I'm not entirely sure it's fair to say that the lighthearted action/platformer is a losing proposition.....it's just that nobody really takes a stab at it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...ion.microsoft1
Then we went off, and I spent a lot of time in the Midlands with Rare, trying to work on stuff that would give us a little bit more balance. And so a few years ago we started working on Viva Pinata, and again we wanted to do it differently because we knew we couldn't just launch piñata at the same time as we were focusing on efficient killing. And so we did a deal with Saturday morning TV who launched a cartoon series which is still very popular to get the piñata characters up and running. So we used Viva Pinata as a broader play into the more casual market to attract younger consumers, female consumers and to take a little bit of the edge off the box.
I thought ultimately it would be very successful – and you know, Microsoft, we'd had a tough time getting Rare back – Perfect Dark Zero was a launch title and didn't do as well as Perfect Dark… but we were trying all kinds of classic Rare stuff and unfortunately I think the industry had past Rare by – it's a strong statement but what they were good at, new consumers didn't care about anymore, and it was tough because they were trying very hard - Chris and Tim Stamper were still there – to try and recreate the glory years of Rare, which is the reason Microsoft paid a lot of money for them and I spent a lot of time getting on a train to Twycross to meet them. Great people. But their skillsets were from a different time and a different place and were not applicable in today's market.
OUCH!
He has no right to say such things about the makers of Donkey Kong!!
EDIT : - By Donkey Kong....I mean DONKEY KONG COUNTRY....not the other stupid & boring arcade game!
