Rare has already made it known that they're working on bringing their IP to Project Natal and the studio is currently hiring for Natal development. Rare's IP (Kameo, Viva Piñata, Banjo Kazooie, etc.) hasn't always been the greatest fit with the hardcore Xbox 360 audience; that's not to say core gamers don't enjoy those games, but many of the titles would seem to have greater casual appeal. And that's precisely why Rare is so excited about Natal.
"I do feel in many ways that – and I’ve said this to some people as well – for me this is really the first time that Microsoft and Rare are on a very similar path," Rare design director George Andreas commented to Videogamer. "We’ve obviously been tasked to create experiences that nobody else can create, which explains things like your Kameos and your Piñatas and your Banjos. But obviously the hardware is aimed at a different demographic, and so we’ve always battled against that."
He continued, "Whereas now with Natal, it looks like the roads are on the same path. It’s a union of the two philosophies of the different companies, I guess. Natal is supposed to reach out to a broader audience and a broader consumer, and Rare’s products are always aiming in that direction as well. So from that perspective the future looks incredibly bright for us really. It’s definitely something everyone’s enthused about and energized about."
IndustryGamers is very curious to see how Rare will adapt its games to Natal, but we don't doubt that it could potentially work out quite well for the studio and finally get its games in front of a larger audience.
3 Comments
August 27, 2009
Let's be frank. Rare has not made a commercially successful game since they were acquired by Microsoft. They peaked with Donkey Kong Country.
August 27, 2009
Ooh, maybe they peaked on the Nintendo 64 with Goldeneye. Regardless, nothing that they've made recently has been a breakout hit compared to their glory days during the '90s.
March 10, 2010
I used to be a big fan of Rare. I was obsessed with Killer Instinct on SNES. I played the original DKC multiple times with my little brother. I played Goldeneye single and multiplayer incessantly with friends in high school. I thought DK64 was technically a beautiful game and it was fun, even if the collectathon gameplay got old pretty fast. I LOVED Perfect Dark even more than Goldeneye, although I didn't get the opportunity to play with friends as much as I did with Goldeneye. The culmination of their greatness came in their last big hurrah, Conker's Bad Fur Day. Again, I LOVED this game. Nintendo and Rare complemented each other SO well. I never even played the Banjo series or Jet Force Gemini, but I had wanted to. Unfortunately Nintendo made a huge mistake forcing Rare to convert Dinosaur Planet into StarFox Adventures, which was fun but obviously not meant to be a Star Fox game (remember when you're about to fight that dinosaur boss and Andross simply kills him in a cutscene so that you can fly off and fight him instead? LAME!)
By this point the Stamper brothers were ready to move on from their role in the business and were entertaining a buyout offer from MS. The Stampers gave Nintendo first right of refusal since they already owned 49% of Rare, but Nintendo made the controversial decision to sell them off to MS. As angry as Nintendo fans were at the time, with the benefit of hindsight it was clear years ago that Nintendo made the right decision. That magic, that "spark" somehow left Rare. I don't know if it was the absence of the Stampers who founded the company, the key creators of Goldeneye like Martin Hollis, David Doak, and others, the lack of Nintendo's oversight, or all of the above. But Rare has done nothing to impress me gameplay and design wise since 2001 with Conker, even if they continue to wow graphically. I wish Rare all the best and hope that they someday reclaim their former glory, but I remain skeptical of that possibility and feel sad about the situation more than anything.
I do believe Rare's trouble selling significant amounts of software for the Xbox brand does have a lot to do with the disparity between the Xbox demographic and Rare's style of games. The problem, in my view, is that Rare continued to focus on their Nintendo style family friendly type games when they should have been working on more core focused IP's. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was not what people wanted with their Xbox debut. Conker remake was graphically impressive but overall considered inferior to the original title. Kameo was nice, but what happened to Killer Instinct? It's been far too long since that series has been updated. And when they finally launched Perfect Dark Zero with the 360, it was so radically different from the original game that I consider it less important to the series than the all but forgotten Game Boy Color rendition. When Rare was with Nintendo their family style games were amenable to Nintendo's demographic but also overseen by Nintendo's quality control experts. I think MS assumed Rare knew what they were doing due to the pedigree of their catalog, and therefore either didn't provide much project oversight or simply inferior oversight to what Nintendo could provide. When Rare made core minded games like Perfect Dark for Nintendo, they were titles that could stand toe to toe with the best titles on the Playstation. Similar attempts for the Xbox platforms couldn't hold a candle to the best shooters already released by that time. I feel that Rare is simply a collection of amazing artists and programmers who are lacking top talent to steer the overall creative vision of their projects. If they were still being guided by the likes of Miyamoto or the Stamper brothers, Rare's fortunes would be quite different.