Topic: Rare's New Xbox360 game revealed!!

[Smash_Brother]

What 7 year old kids would have a 360, though?

Like I said, wrong demographic for the concept. It sounds like "Sim Life" or an educational game, neither of which are a FPS.

[blackfootsteps]

It sorta reminds me of Space Station Silicon Valley with all the animals and such, but with nice visuals.

As for the loss of Rare: There are many variables to consider when trying to determine the effect that it had on Nintendo's future. For example a lot of my Super NES - N64 owning mates got an XBOX for the sole reason that Perfect Dark would be coming out on it. If they had known that it would be on XBOX 360 they may have got a GameCube instead.

[Smash_Brother]

That's just the time honored tradition of using vaporware to attract sales.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

Why am I under the impression Ian conveniently forgets the contributions of other 3rd party publishers while insisting on a "lack of variety" due to Rare's loss?

[Smash_Brother]

Because REmake, RE0, RE4, Viewtiful Joe, Tales of Symphonia, Donkey Konga, Super Mario Strikers, and many others apparently never shipped to his home country: the United Ian Emirates, and fedex and UPS don't deliver there so Lik-Sang and Play-Asia can't reach him.

I also suspect he doesn't play his DS online because his country's phone lines are entirely composed of bailing twine and spittle.

EDIT: I should be clear that I think the GC could have used more 3rd party support, but I DON'T think Rare would have added a hell of a lot to that support. The next two games out of Rare were Grabbed by the Ghoulies and Conker Live and Reloaded. Even if those efforts had been put into a game like a new Donkey Kong or something, they still would have been sub-par. Remember SFA was largely shiat upon by critics and the amount of time and money that went into it did NOT pay off for Nintendo as the game never recouped its losses. Rare is a cash-sink, and even with a behemoth like MS pouring money into them, they still produce below-average games.

It seems like now, more than ever, developing games is one huge joke to Rare, like getting them to perform is akin to forcing a belligerent child to do his homework.

Rare is not what we remember it to be and, looking at what we've seen from the company as of late, losing them would not have hurt Nintendo very much at all.

[Djunknown]

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“With Rare and 4Kids Entertainment we will best showcase the vibrant world of ‘Viva Piñata,’ enabling a mass audience to have an immersive experience via the animated television series, the Xbox 360 title and related merchandise.”

source

Sounds like Viva Pinata's wants to be the new Pokemon. Ambitious, but is it nessecary? They have the tech heads 'on-lock' as they say.

I'm sure MS is cracking the whip so that Rare can shape up. Its a clean slate now, they have to prove their 350 million dollars worth...

[wandering]

I guess I'm the one to say it: this game would probably work much better with the rev controller.....

[cmoney]

I truly hate the fact that MS gets a taste of nintendo with the two or three developers still with rare from the good ol' days. Games like this scare me. Because it'll probably do quite well and I do NOT want a 360. Bah.

[Ian Sane]

"For me, Retro is the new Rare...And you can't forget other additions that were made post-Rare like Tokyo EAD...Ninty didn't lose anything..."

We used to have Retro AND Rare though.  Now we didn't really get any time where we got to enjoy both companies output since Rare left shortly after Retro's first game came out.  But if Rare didn't leave we still would have got games from Retro.  I don't really know who Tokyo EAD is.  What games have they made?

"Why am I under the impression Ian conveniently forgets the contributions of other 3rd party publishers while insisting on a 'lack of variety' due to Rare's loss?"

I'm talking about a lack of variety in Nintendo's own output.  It's far too samey these days.  First party variety is important because that's the only support that's constant.  Plus that's not a trade off.  We should be getting variety in both first party and third party titles.  Those third parties would have been there ANYWAY even if Rare stayed.  It's not like Nintendo selling Rare brought about all this third party support.  If Nintendo didn't sell Rare we probably would have got the exact same stuff only we would get a few Rare games out of it as well.  Rare games that probably would have turned out better with Nintendo's involvement.

You can't convince me that dropping a talented developer to a competitor is a good idea. Nintendo apologists used to say the same thing about Square during the Playstation days.

[jasonditz]

But how talented is Rare anymore? The people responsible for all those great games in their heyday are long gone... the games MSFT got out of them have been positively forgettable. Sure, Nintendo's help probably would've improved them at least a little, but at what cost? There are only so many hours in the day, and Nintendo's only got the ability to hold so many hands at any given time.

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: jasonditz
But how talented is Rare anymore? The people responsible for all those great games in their heyday are long gone... the games MSFT got out of them have been positively forgettable. Sure, Nintendo's help probably would've improved them at least a little, but at what cost? There are only so many hours in the day, and Nintendo's only got the ability to hold so many hands at any given time.

Exactly.

I need to see an expense chart of Rare's work during StarFox Adventures.

Ever seen "My Fair Lady"? Rare reminds me of Mr. Dolittle, whose most famous song is, "With a little bit o' luck, someone else will do the blinkin' work!"

I'm dead serious. Rare is notorious for games having 5 YEAR development cycles. Meanwhile, someone has to pay the salary for these workers and that blood is being leeched from MS now in exchange for the occasional sub-par game.

Rare's top talent left a long time ago.

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You can't convince me that dropping a talented developer to a competitor is a good idea. Nintendo apologists used to say the same thing about Square during the Playstation days.

That's about the most ignorant thing I've ever heard you say.

The next game Rare developed after leaving Nintendo: Grabbed by the Ghoulies.

The next game Square developed after leaving Nintendo: Final Fantasy 7.

Can you see a difference, here? Maybe?

I largely suspect that the leaders at Rare were looking to cash in quick and cash out the same way. They made themselves known with DKC and some decent FPSs, then everything beyond that started to suck. They bailed, leaving the company as little more than a name with some franchises attached to it.

Square produces games that reach the 2 million mark within a week of launch. Rare produces games which reek of failure and incompetence. Please don't ever compare the two again.

[KDR_11k]

I think the problem with Rare was its nepotistic company structure. The distribution of power was completely independent of the distribution of skill and because management was a bunch of idiots the working conditions were bad. IIRC there was constant crunch, overthrowing decisions because some relative of the founders wanted to get their way, firing talented people because one of said relatives held a grudge, etc. It was sheer luck that they managed to make anything good at all and it seems that Nintendo was the one who applied the proper pressure to make Rare do anything at all (compare their releases for the N64 with their releases for the XBox). The company has a high turnover even in the upper positions so it's no wonder that quality fluctuates so much, they never keep their talented people for long.

From the reports I've heard you're better off in one of EA's worst studios than working for Rare.

[Hostile Creation]

Rare didn't make a single good game after the original Perfect Dark.  Donkey Kong 64 was crap, Star Fox Adventures was crap.  And every other game was delayed into the abyss.  Everything they've made for Microsoft has been crap.  There is absolutely no indication that Rare was even remotely good anymore.

[IceCold]

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I don't really know who Tokyo EAD is. What games have they made?

Jungle Beat. And whether you liked it or not doesn't matter; you can't deny that they have potential..

[Bill Aurion]

"And whether you liked it or not doesn't matter; you can't deny that they have potential.."

Except in this case it does...If you don't like it you just hate games...

[TrueNerd]

What "variety" did Rare add when they were part of Nintendo? I seem to remember not one but THREE Super Mario 64 clones (Banjo-Kazooie/Twooie, DK64, and to a lesser extent, Conker's Bad Fur Day) in the N64's lifetime, and not one of them was as memorable or as enjoyable as SM64. I guess Conker was varied enough to stand on it's own, but the point still remains. Jet Force Gemini, while different, SUCKED. Blast Corps was good, and I sunk far more time into GoldenEye then I care to admit. But outside of those two games, I fail to see any true variety that Rare offered Nintendo. Star Fox Adventures would have just been an inferior Zelda clone, even if Nintendo had left it alone as Dinosaur Planet. What was Rare's big achievement in the SNES era? Donkey Kong Country, a decent, unoriginal platformer overhyped due to it's cutting edge visuals, but came nowhere near touching either Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island.

Was there a slew of crazy, inventive games made by Rare that I missed out on?    

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: TrueNerd
Donkey Kong Country, a decent, unoriginal platformer overhyped due to it's cutting edge visuals...

...and awesome gameplay. The Donkey Kong Country games remain some of the best platformers out there. Was it as good as Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island? Perhaps not that finely tuned, but when you contrast anything to the near best games in the genre then of course they won't look as good.  

[UltimatePartyBear]

Quote
Originally posted by: Arbok
...and awesome gameplay. The Donkey Kong Country games remain some of the best platformers out there. Was it as good as Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island? Perhaps not that finely tuned, but when you contrast anything to the near best games in the genre then of course they won't look as good.

Seconded.  The only flaw in Donkey Kong Country was that the graphics made the edges of platforms indistinct.  In my opinion, Rare learned the wrong lesson from that series, though.  They began to concentrate almost solely on graphics.  The gameplay in their N64 games steadily declined with each new release, while they continued to push the N64 beyond its limits.  The framerates in Rare's games got so bad that I eventually couldn't stand to play them anymore.  I never finished Perfect Dark, and I couldn't even bring myself to play Banjo-Tooie or Donkey Kong 64.  By the time the hardware caught up with their desire for pretty colored lighting and lens flares, they had forgotten how to make a game fun.  'Tis a pity.

It's especially a pity because this game looks interesting, but I have zero confidence in Rare being able to pull it off well.  

(edit: accidentally posted before finishing my thought)

[Ian Sane]

"What 'variety' did Rare add when they were part of Nintendo?"

A lot of it was the style.  The graphics weren't so bright and colourful and there was a unique sense of humour present that you didn't see in EAD's games.  Today they have Camelot working on Mario Golf/Tennis, Hudson working on Mario Party, Konami working on DDR Mario Mix, and Namco working on Mario Baseball and they all have the exact same style and feel.  All those games are made by different companies but their style is no different than EAD's.  Rare games you could always recognize as different than Nintendo at first glance.

Plus they made some games that Nintendo would never have made themselves.  Killer Instinct, Blast Corps, Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker.  You might not like some of them but Nintendo never makes games like those.  Plus even something like Donkey Kong Country, which has a Nintendo character in it, has a different style then Nintendo's.  If EAD made Donkey Kong Country it would have been totally different.

Different developers provide their own little touches that provide variety to a lineup.  Lately Nintendo has robbed games of those touches by having talented third parties working on Nintendo franchises instead of something that lets their own uniqueness stand out.  It may be just a fluke coincidence that Rare's leaving and Nintendo going franchise crazy coincide.  If Nintendo didn't do insane things like having Sega and Namco work on Nintendo games or having Silicon Knights work on remakes them maybe I wouldn't care so much about Rare leaving.  When Nintendo had Rare there was some variety in Nintendo's games.  Since Rare left almost everything has this bland homogenous look, feel, and style.  Maybe the problem is not a lack of Rare but just Nintendo having no idea what the purpose of third party support is.

[PaLaDiN]

Come on, Ian. Retro Studios? Don't dismiss the best thing Nintendo had going for them this generation.

[Ian Sane]

I'm not dismissing Retro.  They and Intelligent Systems are the only Nintendo devs I see that have their own style completely different from EAD (well maybe N-Space and Kuju but they're pretty new).  I'm not saying Nintendo has no variety just that they have very little.

Plus Retro has only made two games and one is a sequel to the other so it's not like with their release schedule they're going to consistently keep Nintendo's lineup varied.

[Kairon]

Whoever said Retro was the new Rare, don't scare me! Retro's only released 2 games in the Cube's entire life...with a long dev time like that they MIGHT become the new Rare! NOOOOOOO!

There's no question that we miss the spice that Rare's style added. Heck, I LURV Conker's Bad Fur Day on that basis alone. Can you imagine that? Me, a hardcore Miyamoto-give-me-game-control-or-give-me-death fanboi liking Conker?!?!?! I still maintain that if Rare concentrated on the strengths made evident in the Conker game they'd be a better company for it, similar to how DMA concentrated on the strengths of Body harvest and came up with GTA3.

But the bottomline is that most of us are convinced that Rare has become a bit of a deadweight. How can you get any stylistic variation benefits from a company that can't even reliably produce games of decent quality or reliable sales? That would basically turn Rare into a white-elephant for Nintendo.

They were a competent and occasionally break-out developer in the N64 days who benefitted greatly from Nintendo's branding, but lengthening development times for a company that was 250+ in size at the end of the N64 era, poor output, and a lack of truly innovative concepts have truly served to make us question their current worth. "Rare" itself is just a name, but given a 4-5 year long effective absence from major releases it should be perfectly sensible to question whether there's anything left of value at Rare aside from that name. Hmm... Viva Pinata may redeem them, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

In fact, in hindsight, I'm led to believe that Nintendo was very savvy, level-headed and ultimately justified in their pawning off of Rare to Microsoft. And also, this casts Microsoft in a strange light, as if they're eagerly tryiny to replicate Nintendo's formula, first overpaying for developer scraps from Nintendo's table and then trying to do a full-package replication of Nintendo's Pokemon with Viva Pinata.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[UltimatePartyBear]

Yeah, I have to agree.  Right now Retro is still largely unproven.  Sure, Metroid Prime is great, but until they get the opportunity to work on something else for a change, it's hard to say how much of a difference Retro will make in the long run.  I'm hoping the promise they've shown so far bears fruit in other genres.  I especially hope that their developers don't chafe under the Metroid yoke and go Free Radical on us.

It's starting to look like what some people miss isn't anything to do with Rare exactly, but the British humour they put in their games.  All Nintendo needs to do is find another British developer that likes fart jokes and sexual innuendo (nudge nudge), and nobody will even remember Rare.

[Smash_Brother]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ian Sane
If Nintendo didn't do insane things like having Sega and Namco work on Nintendo games or having Silicon Knights work on remakes them maybe I wouldn't care so much about Rare leaving.

F-Zero GX, Donkey Konga and MGS:TS were all excellent games and credits to the cube's lineup. I won't say the same for SF:Armada, though.

[King of Twitch]

Man, Rare games were just as colorful. DKR, BK, DK64, all had great graphics for their time and a unique style but they all had odd colors sloshed everywhere.

Fun facts:
96, 98, and 01, Rare only released one N64 game each.  99 saw two Rare games, and only 00 and 97 saw three Rare N64 games. Last year 2 were out on 360 which is better than N64's first holiday (though both were in development for several years), and now three are currently known to be in development. They certainly pace themselves.

Retro had 4 games in development up to mid-01, all 4 were cancelled and people were fired to release one game in 2002 and another in 2004. Who knows when the other 4 would've been released. Retro doesn't replace Rare, even with their slowness.