Shocking

Microsoft to Buy Rare?


 An article on site gamesindustry.biz suggests that Microsoft is readying a shocking announcement -- the purchase of Rare, one of Nintendo\'s key second-party developers.
Rare has recently completed Star Fox Adventures for GameCube and has no known, active projects in the pipeline (besides Perfect Dark 0, which has never been shown publically.)

According to gamesindustry.biz, Nintendo will sell its stake in Rare to MS. The developer will then move its projects over to Xbox. For several months, it\'s been rumored that Rare would become a third party developer. If this is true, their games will surely feature the "Only on Xbox" mark instead.

Gamers.com

There have been rumors about this for awhile... kinda hope it\'s not true, for Nintendo\'s sake.  Rare was a big developer for them.

[Living-In-Clip]

*yawn*

Industry rumor\'s one and two, put together to make three. Confused? Let me explain.

Number one rumor in the industry is MS buying someone out. Those strong arm tactics brought over into the game industry. It\'s been the top rumor since the first day MS announced the "X-BOX".

Second rumor in the industry has been Rare goin\' second party . .

SO what do you do? Up the ante on both rumors and mix \'em. You get the new rumor about MS buying Rare!

Rumors, sometimes have truth to them. I was reading an old thread a lil while ago where you said we\'d NEVER see Crazy Taxi on the PS2.. that Sega wouldn\'t dare go 3rd party. That rumor turned out to be true.

Rumors are Rumors... persistant Rumors usually have something spuring them on. I wouldn\'t be surprised if there is SOME truth to some of the rumors.. but it\'s no use speculating at this point. Lets jus sit back and take things as they may.

My take is this: Th\' Stamper brothers want to sell Rare and retire, and Nintendo doesn\'t think they need them.

MS gets Rare, Nintendo makes money, the Stampers make money. SFA is the last GCN game Rare makes.

Nintendo no longer has to carry what they consider to be a burnt-out studio. Using the millions of dollars they obtain from Rare/MS, they may invest in another developer. Sega is rumored, but I don\'t think this would be so good. For one thing, Sega is worth far.. far more than Rare.. defeating the purpose of selling Rare for Sega..

And, Sega\'d have to port all of their upcoming releases to GCN.. and this would take a while.

[GmanJoe]

But the classic Rare games are owned by Nintendo, if I recall correctly. So only new Rare games will come out to Xbox.

Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie, and Conker are all Rare owned I believe.

At some conference (I can\'t remember which) there was a short list of games/developers on GameCube.

Under the name Rareware, there was Star Fox Adventures and I think.. Donkey Kong Racing.

Under the name Nintendo, there was Mario, Zelda, etc etc.. and Perfect Dark 0! I don\'t know what that means.

Maybe Nintendo bought the Perfect Dark franchise?

That would be a good move on thier part considering how anticipated PD is.

May-be.

What happened to Kameo?  I thought that was coming from Rare or Retro also.

And I thought Nintendo had some other developers under their wing.  Left Field Studios and Camelot Productions or something like that?

Well, for one thing.. this presentation doesn\'t show nearly everything. But..

Left Field = no longer 2nd-party (unconfirmed) - It makes sense, since Left Field wasn\'t doing much.

Camelot = 3rd-party with extremely close ties to Nintendo.

Rare = developing Kameo, but if they go to MS it may be cancelled.

Retro = developing Metroid Prime. No other information available.

[Living-In-Clip]

I have almost no doubts that Rare is goin\' third party in the near future, but at the same time I don\'t see them being bought by MS.