My biggest beaf with this whole issue is that Microsoft drove Rare further into the ground. I mean they were heading that way on their own any way, but if they had stayed with Nintendo they might have turned it around.
I mean look at the abismal sales/acceptance of Perfect Dark Zero, Conker: Live and Reloaded and some cases the Perfect Dark remake are signs that Rare only got worse under Microsoft's domain.
I just have to wonder what the wii woud be like if Rare and Nintendo never split up?
If Rare titles will never return to a Nintendo console, and they wont, the only people who will get money from me at all will be the second handers who have used copies of the Rare SNES and N64 cartridges or emulaters.
The biggest obstacle to this issue is not Microsoft or Rare, but Nintendo themselves. Let us assume that some kind of deal was to be made, Microsoft says, "Okay Nintendo, you can have Conker and Banjo on the VC service, but since Rare developed Donkey Kong and Star Fox games, we want those on Xbox live, too." Nintendo will never allow their intellectual properties to be ported to non-Nintendo products.
Word on the internet is that Nintendo fanboys argue that since these games were developed for Nintendo systems, they should be emulated on the virtual console. This argument has credibility, but the dollar signs in Microsoft's eye are blocking the bleeding hearts of Nintendo fans. Unless they are thinking of buying an xbox on the other hand.
Conker's Bad Fur Day 3DS would be nice.