RARE IS A BUST
The once beloved developer Rare could now possibly be one of the biggest busts in gaming history.
Posted by Omodis420 on Feb 18, 2009 15:24 (Yesterday)
In 2002, Microsoft paid $375 million to buy developer Rare the makers of the insanely popular N64 hits GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, and Banjo-Kazooie to name a few. The acquisition was a major blow to Nintendo at the time, and many analysts believed the move to be a very smart move for Microsoft.
Now six years and $375 million later Rare has still failed to produce results. In the three years that Rare has been developing games for the Xbox 360 Rare has only managed to generated just over $66 million combined domestically over those three years, according to the NPD Group.
Unpleased with these results Microsoft has announced plans to begin restructuring Rare in order to make the developer more profitable. Rare apparently likes the idea. Rare studio manager Mark Betteridge told Gamespot.com "As the entire industry struggles to address the increasing scale and cost of development, we too have felt a need to restructure our current approach so we can speed development and better manage the scale required to create high quality games," explained Betteridge.
Even with the restructuring that will be taking place does the problem go deeper for Rare. After all Rare really hasn't done much ever since the N64 days. Has Rare gone creatively bust?
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I am curious to know whether genuinly objective views think the circumstance of this news is a type of reversal of fortune on the Wii's audience/casual market? If Rare doesn't sell on 360 do "core" games have the same kind of shot on Wii?
To me it doesn't look like the Wii audience would inadvertently cause the death of core dev. but considering the fact that most dev. are not risking it anyway its hard to definitively say so.
I think as console share increases hitting 500k and then 1mill, even on core games, will be easier. The great tragedy here is whether Rare spent too much on their games while Wii seemingly gets table scraps.
OBJECTIVE VIEWPOINTS, no trolling
