don't generalize, i think what you mean by "EVERYONE"  mostly are nintendo fanboys. I love the new Banjo game and so do most people who actually played the game. Read impressions in neogaf, heck even one of the guys at giantbomb gave it GOTY award.

I can't believe you just said they don't worry about quality. Their games this gen (kameo, banjo, viva pinata) have superior art, graphics, and gameplay compared to that shitty FPS you're hypin to death "the counduit" Yes quality is subjective, but to say they don't worry about it stupid.

Rare went bad long before MS bought them out. A good chunk of people left in 97, them more left in 98-99 and formed Free Radical.

Say what you will, but 1997-2001 (or 2000, I forget when Conker's Bad Fur Day came out) is often treated as a golden period for them. granted, a lot of that is probably nostalgia from people who cut their eye teeth on the N64, but... well, Conker was awesome anyway.

Perfect Dark on N64 was also an awesome game. I think it came out in 2000.

2001 and yes the game kicked loads of donkey butts.

I remember wrong. Nintendo seems have paid $ 25 million for 25% of Rare in 1995.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE7D81F3FF93AA25757C0A963958260&scp=6&sq=nintendo%20rare&st=cse 

EDIT: I suspect that Nintendo got 49% of stakes because when Rare needed some funds from Nintendo they sold them bit chunck of the company.

What Peter Moore think about Rare:

In the interest of providing a little background, you'll recall that Microsoft acquired Rare (including the 49 percent of shares owned by Nintendo) back in 2002, for a whopping $377 million. It seemed like a coup at the time, as Rare was coming off a number of hits for the Nintendo 64, including Banjo-Kazooie, GoldenEye, and Perfect Dark. But as Moore tells it, they're prior success never quite translated over to Microsoft's hardware:

"I thought ultimately [Viva Pinata] 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 -- [original Rare founders] 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."

Some harsh words, but when you consider Rare's output for the Xbox and Xbox 360, including already long-forgotten titles like Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Kameo: Elements of Power, it's hard to argue that Moore's account isn't accurate.

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3169979

Doesn't Nintendo give help and direction to its second parties?

It could be that without that help, Rare was just a mediocre developer.

But most off those games were pretty well into development by the time those staff losses occured.  PD, for example, was well on its way by the time some of its key staff members left to create Free Radical.  Banjo Tooie was a sequel, meaning less need for original work, and it was only a month behind PD.  2001 sees CBFD, but it seems to me as if that game was in development forever before finally being released, and it was only 5 months behind BT itself.  Those golden years were just the tail-end effect of those staff members and the impact they had early in each of those games' dev cycle.  After that, they fell apart fast.

Same people bashing rare, are the same people who haven't played Viva Pinata and the new Banjo. Goulies was not great, PD0 was ok for a launch title, as was Kameo. However the newest two games have been fantastic.