I actually made this list for a friend, but it took me so long to finish it I felt I oughta share it with you guys. sorry for any inaccuracies, and feel free to shelter under the anonymity of the internet and call me a retard or an idiot if my opinions differ from yours. :) microsoft's original console studios in 2001: 1. Bungie 2. Indie Built (Amped, Top Spin)-sold to take 2 3. Digital Anvil (the halo-killer Brute Force)-canned 4. FASA (mech assault)-canned, unfortunately 5. Bizarre Creations (Project Gotham) that's all i could find. they did, however, team up with a bunch of never-award winning studios for such hits as: 1. Beep Industries (Voodoo Vince)-closed down, i think 2. Presto Studios (Whacked!)-actually did win an award for an old Myst-like game, but after the unexpected failure of such a sure-fire hit like Whacked!, then went out of business. 3. Studio Gigante (Tao Feng)-they just made Charlotte's Web game, so I guess they are still just as awesome as ever. 4. Curly Monsters (Quantum Redshift)-i think they are closed too. 5. Climax (Sudeki)-after wowing someone, maybe, with the awesome possibilities of playing a four player game by yourself, they are making multiplatform games. they recently kicked some ass with their Ghost Rider game (56%, gamerankings) 6. Oddworld Inhabitants (uh, oddworld?)-well, what happens when you make weird games and they don't get marketed or sell well? 7. High Voltage Software (all those crappy microsoft sports games)-some idiot let them make the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory game. they should've been canned. all that money microsoft dumped into them could've been spent improving the Doom-killer, Brute Force. 8. DICE (Midtown Madness 3)-i remember people saying this game was pretty good. i've never heard of the first two midtown madness games though. these guys got the only fate worse than being canned: being purchased by EA. 9. Just Add Monsters (Kung Fu Chaos)-merged and reformed as Ninja Theory. Big surprise that Microsoft was skeptical to pick up the rights for Heavenly Sword from these familiar guys. 10. Phantagram (Kingdom Under Fire)-they're still around; after 3 major hits with Microsoft, I think it's safe to say these guys and Bioware and on the same level. 11. Dream Publishing (Kakuto Chojin)-a small scale, indie developer. from the looks of their website, they are gonna stay that way. 12. Blitz Games (Fuzion Frenzy)-i had hoped these joers went out of business, but then i learned there is something even worse than being bought by EA...they made the burger king games. 13. Stormfront Studios (Bloodwake)-despite massive demand for another boat-combat game, these guys went third party. they just made the Eragon game. how many games about a boy and his dragon have been sucessful the past decade? none. 14. Artoon (Blinx)-i think this goes to show you that some studios are good at following instructions, but aren't very creative. when Nintendo asks them to make a Yoshi game based on the original Yoshi's Island, they do. when Microsoft asks them to make a platformer to compete with Mario about a cat that can alter time, well, they do that too. 15. Adrenium Games (Azurik)-i think the most recent thing they've done is the lemony snicket game. 16. VR1 (Nightcaster)-i can't find anything about these experts, so i guess it was determined they couldn't even handle some crappy movie license. but you can't blame Microsoft for trying, right...? i assume when Microsoft was in talks with Molyneiux about Fable, they were holding a copy of Nightcaster and asking him if he was certain nobody from VR-1 worked for him. 17. Mediavision Corporation (Sneakers)-good luck figuring out what happened to these guys...in lieu of any actual information about them, i'll just post what Microsoft said about the game on their website: "Sneakers is a fun, comical adventure filled with cartoon combat." i count at least three lies in that sentence. in case you were wondering what Microsoft was doing when they were supposed to be making Riddick or Phantom Dust backward compatible, you guessed it. they were working on an emulation for Sneakers. well, i guess that's about it. after a couple years, Microsoft has learned some lessons and made a few good moves (teaming with Bioware, Capcom, Lionhead, Epic, Ensemble) and a few questionable ones (Rare, Hudson, the twice-cancelled trilogy of Too Human, and the rotting corpse of Tenchu).

No Rare?

stof - my thought. sieanr - oddword is... well... odd... a little sadistic... AWESOME game tho.

I don't think I can ever forgive MS and FASA for what they did with Battletech. >:(

I loved Oddworld.

re: No Rare? this post pretty much stemmed from a conversation with my friend about how most of the Xbox's first-party games sucked until microsoft ditched some of the crappy studios they worked with. so, it wasn't really about the later dev. teams like rare or bioware.