Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Buys Rare
Phwoar writes "Microsoft have announced their buyout of the games developer Rare. After a $375 million payoff Rare will now produce games solely for the Xbox. After Rare's recent releases for the Nintendo systems bombed, Nintendo decided to sell their 49% stake in the company last week rather than buy the company themselves.
Google News has a nice collection of links to articles regarding the announcement." You might be reminded of Microsoft's purchase of Bungie a few years ago.
Considering the fact that Nintendo is quickly picking up great 3rd part support, such as Squaresoft and Capcom's Resident Evil series, this actually makes a lot more sense then it did at first glance. the register, at http://www.theregus.com/content/54/26394.html, makes a great point about the logics of selling Rare, which is what many argued was Nintendo's greatest asset. Apparently, the founders of Rare, the Stamper Brothers, are soon to leave the company, so most of the innovation that came in Rare games was to leave them. I am a proud owner of a Gamecube, and all I can say is, we still get Starfox, and we can always just make another great 1st person shooter using the 007 liscense :)
I think it's less about making tons of money from Rare's games than just having the games on their console. Example:
1) Rare makes another Goldeneye.
2) Rare's new game makes MS $5 million
3) 10,000 people buy X-Boxes just to play this game. Conversely, these people DON'T buy PS2s and Gamecubes because those systems don't have this cool new game.
4) MS increases user base.
5) ???
6) Profit!
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
375 megabucks is a lot of cash. MS has had significant problems marketing XBox. It seems to me that they must be really worried about losing a source of games.
Does anyone know how many employees work at Rare? I know it's not distributed evenly but they must be pretty happy about it on the average.
Especially so for those whose stock is already vested.
-scsg
Not to sound like an MS hater here, but this is an incredibly poor purchase. Rare as a development studio was cut loose by Nintendo because (in addition to making up very little of Nintendo's revenue for 2001 and 2002 prior to Starfox) they missed deadlines and put out subpar games (DK64, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark (if you can't stand the horrid framerate)) for the last several years. To make matters worse, most of the decent devs (including the founders) have left to form their own companies and Rare itself only has two or three marketable licenses (Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie, and Conker (maaaaybe)). So MS is paying hundreds of millions for a game developer recently known for its overbudget, late games that aren't very good and doesn't even get any big licenses in the bargain. Why didn't they just sink $10 mil into 20 or 30 dev houses to fund a bunch of big exclusive games? They'd get more results faster and almost assuredly higher quality.
With the delay of Panzer Dragoon Orta to 2003 the Xbox's Christmas lineup is also fairly lackluster and sales this Xmas could be very poor. Of course, if MS keeps pumping marketing dollars into it maybe they can convince America that the console is doing great.
I'm not trying to start a console flamewar (I go where the games are in most cases, and I will probably pick up an Xbox at the next price drop), but with Xbox's sales figures for Japan (the-magicbox.com) showing that in some weeks even the PSOne is outselling it, I wonder if the Japanese game studios will be abandoning what little development they already do on Xbox and concentrating on the two surviving consoles instead.
I think the obvious next move is for Microsoft to buy Sega. Their own developers have some ok sports games, but Sega would buy them some real sports clout along with some younger generation appeal that they could use to balance their library of titles.
Just think, if they could claim exclusive rights to Sega's line of sports games, including NFL, NBA, NHL, baseball, tennis, and college football lines. They could be the premiere sports games for the Xbox Live online service, for example. And a Virtua Fighter would put Xbox squarely in the sights of many fighting game fans, since then DoA, VF, and Soul Calibur would all be available on one system. Add online opponents and tourneys, and they could potentially hand out more hats of money. Then with Sonic and those cute little Super Monkey Balls, they'd have a possible in with children and youngsters that aren't necessarily into the older games. Make all of these exclusives, and the Xbox looks a whole lot better of an investment.
You know they've thought about it, and now we know the stakes: $3.75e8 dollars for someone like Rare that doesn't have the rep or the library of Sega. Sega's gotta be worth what...twice that...in franchises and development talent alone.
While we're talking numbers, how many units of games does Rare have to sell to be worth it to MicroSoft? Or, perhaps more importantly, how many monthly online subscriptions? And how long is it going to take them to pay it off, given that they're going to incur more costs, in terms of development and promotion, just to get a game out the door?
The usual disclaimer: I'm not an Xbox or MS fan. Read my blog and you'll see where my interests lie. I'm just commenting on the situation as I see it...
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
and one they should update for the XBOX.....
:)
R/C Pro-AM!!!!
sorry, had to. i looove that game.
siri
Nintendo sells their shares in Rare and top-off their coffers. They win.
Rare makes off with MS money, the finest money that money can buy. They win too.
MS gets a development house that used to turn out hits, but has floundered in recent years. Tim and Chris Stamper are leaving. That leaves Conker, Perfect Dark, and that's about it. No Donkey Kong or anything else owned by Nintendo.
About the only _real_ downside to Nintendo consumers (IMO) is that any sort of RC Pro-Am sequel will be an xbox exclusive. Boohoo. On a lot of the gamer website forums, this has been a huge non-issue for the past few days, since Rare hasn't been playing with the big boys in terms of game quality/quantity for quite a while.
< tofuhead >
It is still the dark of night.
1) Rare makes another Goldeneye.
2) Rare's new game makes MS $5 million
3) 10,000 people buy X-Boxes just to play this game. Conversely, these people DON'T buy PS2s and Gamecubes because those systems don't have this cool new game.
4) MS increases user base.
5) ???
6) Profit!
Microsoft buys Rare for $375 mill. Microsoft sells $5 mill in games for 4 million in profit. They sell a bunch more consoles at some unkown loss per console.
Looks to me like Microsoft is still out $370 mill at least. Sure doesn't look like a profit to me.
No. Nintendo is not a lesser evil.
http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repository/odditie
My other first post is car post.
Please! Everyone buy an X-Box for the holidays, just don't buy any games. Hack it into a nice little Linux box.
With MS losing between $100 - $200 per machine, they are counting on people buying lots of games to make their money back.
Take the opportunity to get a nice $199 DNS, e-mail or web server.
Microsoft has money to burn -- give them the opportunity.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Sega Saturn was superior to Sony Playstation (two processors, more memory, etc). Sega Dreamcast was superior to PS2 in some ways (it had a more "normal" graphics system and each one came with a modem).
Sometimes, the superior systems don't "win".
My other first post is car post.
One use of this feature can be found in Project Gotham Racing. I can rip my favorine tunes from my CD collection and build a custom playlist. Instead of listening to the crappy in-game music and mindless radio DJs, I can drive to King's X, Van Halen or whatever I want. I think it was a brilliant feature with a promising future.
As a side note, you are right, Rare has not been a big money make lately. Just to get Star Fox Adventures off the ground, Nintendo had to:
A. Wait a year or so for the development of some game called "Dinosaur Island" to grind to a halt in Rare development hell.
B. Spend money on the dead project to revive it with research and added development.
C. Bring in some new developers, who tacked on the Star Fox franchise as a good idea. Nintendo later spent time and resources on trying to hide this fact (why, I don't know), which failed and flooded game fan-boy eweb sites everywhere.
D. Pay for the closing development, which took forever and a fair penny.
How did I become privy to such useless info? Because me is pals with the local Nintendo sales agent. :)
Play some Super Monkey Ball 1/2, Virtua Fighter 4, Sega Soccer Slam, or Sega Sports Tennis, then come back and post that comment again. I dare ya.
There's not much that's more fun (at least when it comes to video games) than getting three friends together and playing Monkey Fight 2 for a couple of hours.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I agree with you for the most part, but I must say that Perfect Dark is a great game. Frame rate could have been quicker, but that was just because they pushed the N64 hard.
I keep an N64 around just for that one to be played in multi-player mode once in a while.
Blogging because I can...
donkey-kong is trademarked by nintendo
But even though Nintendo owns the trademark on the name and likeness of Donkey Kong, Rare owns the copyright to the 3D model of Donkey Kong used in Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros., Super Smash Bros. Melee, and possibly other recent games. (Check the credits.) Now Nintendo will have to license something from Microsoft in order to make Super Smash Bros. 3.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Stores cant keep them in stock since the release of Mario .. And this is just the first of many games.. Next up is StarFox, and then Metroid, and finally ..oO ZELDA Oo.. - Their sales were never lacking in Europe, and in fact, were always ahead of the XBox there. All around the world the machine that is known as Nintendo is starting to dominate. Sonys weak online push is backfiring with shoddy games like SOCOM (terrible reviews), and the only thing keeping that boat afloat is a few key games such as Kingdom Hearts and GTA3. MS and Sony will be dumping so much money into online services that will just flop. If anyones been watching all these new online games for both systems, they're getting slammed left and right because of realtime chatting with voice its nothing but swearing, the parents dont want it, and the games you cant coordinate without keyboards and typing - The sales for the PS2 keyboard have been dull simply because people have just decided for online games, nothing beats the PC. Nintendo played it smart and saw this a mile away. thumbs up, big thumbs up.
The original team that worked on it left Rare to set up their own company - Free Radical. If anyone were still in doubt about TS2's heritage, it kicks off with you launching an assault on a Russian dam. I might also add that the game is quite fantastic (TS1 didn't really impress me) with an absolutely massive number of multiplayer options and characters. Even better than Goldeneye I promise.