Xbox Rare has been an Xbox developer for 20 years now

[Nathan Little]

this u?

Yeah

 

[Gay Bowser]

And almost all of it has been a gigantic waste since the Microsoft buyout.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies is still their best post buyout release by far. Genuinely solid title that got unfairly maligned for being the wrong game on the wrong console, at the wrong time. But otherwise? It’s mostly just been a sea of disappointment for 20 years.

i will not let this viva piñata slander stand

(also sea of thieves was a little rough when it first came out but now it is actually really fun and it feels very “rare”)

 

[Hailinel]

Wow. What an incredible case of the greed of someone really having a negative effect on the future of not one, but two companies. I know a lot of people don’t like to hear this, but Nintendo took a hit themselves for a long time without Rare. Didn’t have their go-to prime partner to fill in software gaps. Had they been around still, would have had less software droughts on the GameCube, Wii and Wii U.

I know that there are people that may not want to hear this, but I feel it was questionable how much longer the Rare of that era would have maintained their golden touch. The studio in that era was rife with mega-crunch and by that point, staff had started moving on.

More to the point, later Rare had some clunkers, at least by their standards. DK64 is the sort of collectathon platformer that people joke about. Jet Force Gemini is heavily flawed game and didn't exactly light the world on fire. Conker's Bad Fur Day was a product or its time and known more for being extraordinarily crass than anything.

Star Fox Adventures, while a heavy rework of Dinosaur Planet, had its weird issues of its own, including a nonsensically large collectable count.

And then looking at the Rare games in the immediate years after the Microsoft buyout...if Grabbed by the Ghoulies had stayed a GCN game, good lord, that would have not likely been received well.

I get it. People miss Rare's Nintendo golden age. But setting aside the business conflicts and interests that led to Nintendo never buying in and MS buying Rare instead, the kind of output people have rose-tinted views of was probably not going to be sustainable. We'd have likely either seen more true clunkers out of a Rare suffering talent attrition or fewer games as a Nintendo-owned Rare took more direct oversight.

And they would not necessarily have made DK games in perpetuity.

Also, Rare would not have saved the Wii U. Goodness gracious. If they were still making Nintendo titles then, they'd have been shifted over to Switch dev at the earliest opportunity.

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

It's difficult to say how Rare would have fared under Nintendo. But regardless of whether they'd have been able to make games worthy of their SNES & early-to-mid N64 era legacy, a single studio materially affecting the lineup of a console doesn't really happen anymore (unless it's a massive multi-team studio like EPD). Simply due to how long it takes to develop games and how many people are needed, their output would have inevitably dwindled over time. I think it was a mistake for Nintendo to let them go but they should have laid the groundwork much earlier.

 

[Beanstar40]

Rare has put out some really good to great games under microsoft. Conker, viva pinata 1 + 2, grabbed by the ghoulies, kameo, banjo nuts and bolts, sea of thieves, and yes…even kinect sports are all good fun. In particular i have a soft spot for nuts and bolts. Its so much fun, and endlessly charming. Its my 2nd favorite banjo game behind the first. Even though its a somewhat different genre, i think its a better game than tooie. We also got banjo kazooie and tooie in 4k, at 60 fps, with qol enhancements, something we would not have gotten from nintendo

 

[Dinoman96]

We also got banjo kazooie and tooie in 4k, at 60 fps, with qol enhancements, something we would not have gotten from nintendo

That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.

Funnily enough we kinda ended up getting the best of both worlds, with Xbox getting the fancy HD remasters while NSO gets the original games as they were back in the N64 days.

 

[Beanstar40]

That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.

Funnily enough we kinda ended up getting the best of both worlds, with Xbox getting the fancy HD remasters while NSO gets the original games as they were back in the N64 days.

I know it was always unlikely, but i really wish nintendo gave mario 64 the same treatment in 3d all stars. Higher res, better frame rate, qol improvements like a more cooperative camera.

 

[Gartooth]

If I remember right there were at least 3 DK spinoff games at Rare for GCN/GBA that were canceled following the acquisition. Some were reworked like Diddy Kong Pilot being remade into Banjo Pilot, others like Donkey Kong Racing never saw the light of day.

 

[Dinoman96]

If I remember right there were at least 3 DK spinoff games at Rare for GCN/GBA that were canceled following the acquisition. Some were reworked like Diddy Kong Pilot being remade into Banjo Pilot, others like Donkey Kong Racing never saw the light of day.

Coconut Crackers saw the light of day as It's Mr. Pants as well.

They tried to salvage Donkey Kong Racing as a Sabreman game for Xbox/Xbox 360, though ultimately it didn't work out.

Sabreman Stampede [XBOX / X 360 - Cancelled] - Unseen64

Preserving Details, Screenshots, Videos & more Lost Media for Sabreman Stampede [XBOX / X 360 - Cancelled] Help us to remember cancelled video games!

www.unseen64.net

 

[Rareware]

I know that there are people that may not want to hear this, but I feel it was questionable how much longer the Rare of that era would have maintained their golden touch. The studio in that era was rife with mega-crunch and by that point, staff had started moving on.

More to the point, later Rare had some clunkers, at least by their standards. DK64 is the sort of collectathon platformer that people joke about. Jet Force Gemini is heavily flawed game and didn't exactly light the world on fire. Conker's Bad Fur Day was a product or its time and known more for being extraordinarily crass than anything.

Star Fox Adventures, while a heavy rework of Dinosaur Planet, had its weird issues of its own, including a nonsensically large collectable count.

And then looking at the Rare games in the immediate years after the Microsoft buyout...if Grabbed by the Ghoulies had stayed a GCN game, good lord, that would have not likely been received well.

I get it. People miss Rare's Nintendo golden age. But setting aside the business conflicts and interests that led to Nintendo never buying in and MS buying Rare instead, the kind of output people have rose-tinted views of was probably not going to be sustainable. We'd have likely either seen more true clunkers out of a Rare suffering talent attrition or fewer games as a Nintendo-owned Rare took more direct oversight.

And they would not necessarily have made DK games in perpetuity.

Also, Rare would not have saved the Wii U. Goodness gracious. If they were still making Nintendo titles then, they'd have been shifted over to Switch dev at the earliest opportunity.

With the exception of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Rare’s game sales were still doing great numbers. Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million; Jet Force Gemini sold over a million; the “supposedly much hated Donkey Kong 64” sold around 5 million. A game not “setting the world on fire” doesn’t make it bad nor does it equate to a sign of developer problems or what have you. Conker’s poor sales was likely due to a) being a mature game with hardly any marketing whatsoever and b) releasing at the tail end of the N64 life-cycle (GameCube launched 8 months later). Starfox Adventures still sold nearly 2 million as well.

And I disagree wholeheartedly about Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It would have fared much, much better on the GameCube as the audience it was tailored to would have bought it up. That audience was not on the Xbox, but exclusively Nintendo fans and people like me who bough into the Xbox ecosystem just to continue playing Rare’s games.

I’m not implying Rare would have saved the GameCube, or the later years of the Wii, and certainly not the Wii U. What I’m saying is that they would have had less first-party software droughts like in the past because Nintendo and Rare complimented each other extremely well.

As for the Donkey Kong thing… well they certainly had no intentions of stopping by all accounts we know. At the time of acquisition, they were developing Diddy Kong Pilot, DK: Coconut Crackers, and Donkey Kong Racing. And then even after the acquisition, they still partnered with Nintendo to remake the DKC trilogy and Diddy Kong Racing DS. DK had more Rare DNA in it than Nintendo ever did and it’s the one single IP that Rare would likely have continued to work on even after that.

 

[Dinoman96]

In hindsight, It really does kinda sucks that the buyout just violently forced Rare to take whatever they had in development for GCN and hastily rework them for Xbox.

Like, nowadays, whenever Microsoft does acquire a developer, they at least allow them to finish up whatever multi-platform games they have in development before fully converting them into Xbox developers, like how PS4 still got Pyschonauts 2 or how PS5 got Deathloop. Imagine if Rare was, at the very least, allowed to finish their GCN games like Kameo, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Donkey Kong Racing and Perfect Dark Zero before finally becoming a full blown Xbox developer. Star Fox Adventures also likely wouldn't of come out as half baked as it was had Rare been given more time to finish it.

Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million;

Small correction: Tooie only sold 1.49 million.

 

[Hailinel]

With the exception of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Rare’s game sales were still doing great numbers. Perfect Dark and Banjo-Tooie sold over 2 million; Jet Force Gemini sold over a million; the “supposedly much hated Donkey Kong 64” sold around 5 million. A game not “setting the world on fire” doesn’t make it bad nor does it equate to a sign of developer problems or what have you. Conker’s poor sales was likely due to a) being a mature game with hardly any marketing whatsoever and b) releasing at the tail end of the N64 life-cycle (GameCube launched 8 months later). Starfox Adventures still sold nearly 2 million as well.

And I disagree wholeheartedly about Grabbed by the Ghoulies. It would have fared much, much better on the GameCube as the audience it was tailored to would have bought it up. That audience was not on the Xbox, but exclusively Nintendo fans and people like me who bough into the Xbox ecosystem just to continue playing Rare’s games.

I’m not implying Rare would have saved the GameCube, or the later years of the Wii, and certainly not the Wii U. What I’m saying is that they would have had less first-party software droughts like in the past because Nintendo and Rare complimented each other extremely well.

As for the Donkey Kong thing… well they certainly had no intentions of stopping by all accounts we know. At the time of acquisition, they were developing Diddy Kong Pilot, DK: Coconut Crackers, and Donkey Kong Racing. And then even after the acquisition, they still partnered with Nintendo to remake the DKC trilogy and Diddy Kong Racing DS. DK had more Rare DNA in it than Nintendo ever did and it’s the one single IP that Rare would likely have continued to work on even after that.

Rare would have inevitably made fewer games over time, particularly with the move to HD and the increased amount of staff and time necessary to make even one game. They were never going to keep up that output they had on the N64.

And Grabbed by the Ghoulies, at least in the form we know it, would probably have invited unflattering comparisons to Luigi's Mansion, except you play as this doofus named Cooper and swing a stick around. Would it have sold well? Maybe, but I doubt it would be remembered any better.

The assumption that keeps getting made is that Rare would have always been the same studio they were back then, that the staff turnover wouldn't lead to any lulls, that they wouldn't create any true bombs even in the era when Nintendo was a thousand percent intent on bringing in the Wii Sports casual market and it was increasingly difficult to get people to not think of Wii motion controls as waggle. Changes at Rare were inevitable. Maybe we'd see more DK games, maybe not, but Rare was never some magic Wonka factory that could spin nothing but gold forever.

 

[Catalyst]

That is an interesting thought, Rare Replay as it was on Xbone would absolutely never happen under Nintendo's watch lol. We'd just get rom dumps of Rare's old games on Virtual Console and NSO and that'd be the end of it.

Funnily enough we kinda ended up getting the best of both worlds, with Xbox getting the fancy HD remasters while NSO gets the original games as they were back in the N64 days.

I could see some more remasters/remakes on Nintendo consoles though. Like a Banjo remake for 3DS in the vein of Ocarina/Majora/Starfox.

We kinda got one of those anyway with Diddy Kong Racing for DS (but it sort of sucked).

 

[Gartooth]

The quality of the Rare output post buyout being just because of staff departures alone is overexaggerated since it hit some teams more than others. (The DK/Banjo team for example still had a lot of its core members at the company)

Several games had to deal with restarting and moving between multiple consoles like Gamecube-->Xbox-->360 or had sudden creative shifts forced upon them like removing a Nintendo IP from the project. Maybe some games like Ghoulies were destined to suck, but others like Dinosaur Planet/SFA and Kameo could've been great if they didn't have so many sudden moves thrust upon them and were given more time to readjust.

Rare's best games on Xbox prior to the Mattrick era restructuring were games like Viva Pinata 2 and Nuts & Bolts (which despite being a controversial direction for Banjo was largely considered to be good quality) that didn't have these big development issues from the falling out of this deal.

 

[Deleted member 3433]

Rare was in decline long before Microsoft acquired them. But I'm still glad they did instead of Activision. Ultimately GoldenEye 007 was the last shot they got at delivering a hit after disappointing sales of Killer Instinct Gold and Blast Corps, and they luckily succeeded. Unfortunately people key people left the company shortly after due to working conditions and restrictions on creative freedom. Outside of a few hits they didn't meet Nintendo's expectations, especially in the later years (Conker's Bad Fur Day, Mickey's Speedway USA, etc.). And so there's a reason why Nintendo wanted to tie the Dinosaur Planet game to a more recognized brand.

Wrestling With Gaming did a short series on the company, with these two parts dealing with the later years:

 

[Catalyst]

I was curious to see if the “late N64 decline” for Rare was more of a retrospective thing or if the games were still controversial back then. So I checked the Metacritic scores of their post-Banjo, pre-Microsoft games:

Jet Force Gemini: 80/100
Donkey Kong 64: 90/100
Perfect Dark: 97/100 (!!!)
Banjo Tooie: 90/100
Mickey’s Speedway: 71/100 (okay it was a licensed game)
Conker’s Bad Fur Day: 92/100
Star Fox Adventures: 82/100 (for how troubled the development was, this is pretty impressive. The 3DS remake of 64 got roughly the same score)

Obviously Metacritic isn’t the end-all be-all for reception, but the games were pretty well received for the most part. Stuff like DK64 and Tooie clearly were viewed better in the past.
And the games sold well apart from Conker (niche concept released at the tail end of the 64’s lifespan) and Mickey (again, it’s a licensed game).

Grabbed by the Ghoulies performed worse than all of these (including Mickey), so make of that what you will.

 

[Gartooth]

Yeah I've seen the point made before that Rare lost their hit making status after Goldeneye 007 when frankly that wasn't true at all. Banjo-Kazooie, Diddy Kong Racing, and Donkey Kong 64 were all among the top 10 best selling games on the system. So of N64's 10 best sellers, 4/10 came from Rare.

Banjo-Tooie and Perfect Dark both experienced lower sales than their predecessor's (and PD was also a new IP and not 007) but N64 software released in 2000 and 2001 in general did not sell as well as the early years, the audience was moving on. Highly acclaimed games like Majora's Mask and Paper Mario also sold far less than Mario and Zelda games released early in the N64's life.

 

[Dinoman96]

Donkey Kong 64 is actually Rare's best selling 3D platformer, over the Banjo duology lol

As Celine's list on the last page shows, it's funny how Rare's most successful games by far were their licensed stuff like DK and GoldenEye. Unfortunately I get the feeling that may be another reason why Nintendo was willing to let them go. In 2010, they published a new DKC game and also a GoldenEye reimagining (in Japan) on Wii without Rare's help.

 

[Mekanos]

Yeah Perfect Dark had rave reviews at the time, with a lot saying it was better than Goldeneye (which was a big claim back then) and is generally still seen as a classic, so I don't buy the idea that Rare's decline was inevitable, though they would probably go through some rough periods like Retro did (and is?).

 

[Rooster]

People acting like the staff turnover in Rare would've crippled the studio, like each and every one of Nintendo's other subsidiaries or close partners hasn't had key members depart. More over, a lot of important people at Rare didn't leave until years into Microsoft's tenure.

There isn't even a precedent in the quality of the games turning down before the buyout.

It seems like retroactive justification for the failure to buy them out. This was a company pumping out Perfect Dark, Conker and Banjo-Tooie right before they left. Not being able to hit all their deadlines and employee turnaround is something even Nintendo deals with. If anything, Nintendo is better than most parent companies about missing deadlines because they prioritize the quality of the finished product over getting it out asap.

At least Rare's volume of output was substantial enough that, even with delays, there was still a steady stream of releases.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

I'm 2/3rds on DK Vine's Kongversation on the subject.. and man, despite of what is seen as good from the buyout era, I honestly can't value more than what Rare used to offer when on Nintendo. As I said I'm happy with their success of Sea of Thieves, but I don't think its selfish to say that I wish they kept doing stuff that were more akin of their 90's output.

They say Conker wouldn't had a future if Nintendo bought Rare outright, not even in merchandise, but I disagree; Especially now on days of Bayonetta being basically a Nintendo character.. and I suspect that something like Live & Reloaded would fit just right on Nintendo's pursuit of a more mature audience on GameCube too (Eternal Darkness and Geist).. if anything he'd show up as Assist Trophy in Smash by now. Kameo would had been accepted more by the more younger Nintendo demographic too, so would Grab by the Ghoulies.

Irony of all the dispute with Activision, is now they are all under the same roof, huh?

We also got banjo kazooie and tooie in 4k, at 60 fps, with qol enhancements, something we would not have gotten from nintendo

I'm sorry... BK and BT XLBA are great ports and all, but I'd rather had the original N64 ROMs on a Virtual Console service like the Wii, if that meant that new Banjo games were still being made to this day, or at least on a consistent pace.

I say that as the XBLA versions were released when Nuts & Bolts was still new, but now, it's basically all the Banjo franchise has... and that's not a good compromise imo. Banjo could had been incorporeted as a Mario Kart character coming from Diddy Kong Racing, at very least...

 

[Hailinel]

I'm 2/3rds on DK Vine's Kongversation on the subject.. and man, despite of what is seen as good from the buyout era, I honestly can't value more than what Rare used to offer when on Nintendo. As I said I'm happy with their success of Sea of Thieves, but I don't think its selfish to say that I wish they kept doing stuff that were more akin of their 90's output.

They say Conker wouldn't had a future if Nintendo bought Rare outright, not even in merchandise, but I disagree; Especially now on days of Bayonetta being basically a Nintendo character.. and I suspect that something like Live & Reloaded would fit just right on Nintendo's pursuit of a more mature audience on GameCube too (Eternal Darkness and Geist).. if anything he'd show up as Assist Trophy in Smash by now. Kameo would had been accepted more by the more younger Nintendo demographic too, so would Grab by the Ghoulies.

Irony of all the dispute with Activision, is now they are all under the same roof, huh?


I'm sorry... BK and BT XLBA are great ports and all, but I'd rather had the original N64 ROMs on a Virtual Console service like the Wii, if that meant that new Banjo games were still being made to this day, or at least on a consistent pace.

I say that as the XBLA versions were released when Nuts & Bolts was still new, but now, it's basically all the Banjo franchise has... and that's not a good compromise imo. Banjo could had been incorporeted as a Mario Kart character coming from Diddy Kong Racing, at very least...

A lot of this is speculation and wishful thinking. We know that Rare wasn't exactly interested in a third Banjo platformer, which is why they pivoted to Nuts & Bolts instead. There's no guarantee that Banjo would have been a long-term franchise still seeing games made in the modern era. Certainly, their N64 days were mostly new franchises and single-title IPs with little interest in making multiple sequels.

(Although maybe someone at Nintendo could have clued Rare in that starting Nuts & Bolts with an elaborate, jokey takedown of the platformers was going to go over like a wet fart.)

 

[Dinoman96]

Viva Pinata is probably the one post-N64, pre-SOT Rare game that would of made a much bigger impact on Nintendo's platforms than on Xbox. It's already hailed as one of Rare's secret best games by those who've played it, if it came out as a Wii launch title it'd probably be celebrated by Nintendo fans as a classic just like DKC2, Banjo-Kazooie and GoldenEye are.

 

[CyberWolfBia]

A lot of this is speculation and wishful thinking. We know that Rare wasn't exactly interested in a third Banjo platformer, which is why they pivoted to Nuts & Bolts instead. There's no guarantee that Banjo would have been a long-term franchise still seeing games made in the modern era. Certainly, their N64 days were mostly new franchises and single-title IPs with little interest in making multiple sequels.

(Although maybe someone at Nintendo could have clued Rare in that starting Nuts & Bolts with an elaborate, jokey takedown of the platformers was going to go over like a wet fart.)

Eh, I feel confident enough to say that at least Banjo as a brand would survive through the 2000's, even if Rare themselves wasn't that well interested in making new games; In a scenario where Rare became a whole Nintendo owned studio, of course, their IPs wouldn't be solely on their control and Nintendo could hypothetically asign some other studios to make new games, even side stuff and put their characters on things like Smash or Mario Kart. Banjo was valueable for them to a extend.

Perfect Dark and Killer Instinct were other two I could see getting more entries too.

I do think that Nintendo would insist much more on Rare's legacy than Microsoft did before getting them on Kinect Sports. Just look at F-Zero.. never been a consistent seller, always on decline, and took a lot for Nintendo to put on the freezer;

 

[Sorbete]

RArE
SuX!

 

[Rooster]

DK aside, Banjo was their flagship IP, and a fairly successful one. I'm very skeptical it would've ended or lost its success. The Nintendo install base greatly fosters series like that.

I know that "Banjo-Threeie" trailer was just a tech demo, but I believe the third-game wouldn't ultimately have deviated that much from the first two, and probably would've materialized on Gamecube.

And yeah, Perfect Dark and Killer Instinct also both seem like titles that they'd keeping making while the success lasted. If they could maintain the quality on Perfect Dark it probably would've lasted a while, its genre really blew up in that timeframe.

And Conker seems like something Rare would've wanted to try to keep alive. Jury is out on how successful that would've been.