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.

Comments

If this is not "anti-competitive", then what is?

[lingqi]

Here goes microsoft with their dirty tactics again... sigh.

not saying that SONY would not, if they had the money to do it -- oh wait, they DO have the money to buy a couple outside developers just for shits and giggles, but didn't.

Same story has happened before, guys... I remember back in the days when M$ literally parked a "hiring booth" in front of Borland and basically said "if you sign up right now, we give you 150% of what you are making and then a huge bonus (6 figures, maybe more)." look what happened to Borland.

As much as the Xbox is a better system (technology-wise) I would not buy it on principle. doing so is to encourage more of the bloodshed in the world caused by M$ that's already way-too-much. to paraphrase it -- Microsoft is the sickle that harvest the souls of computing.

Anyone who don't think you are suffering because of this game developer buy-out thing: remember: Halo was supposed to be released for PC first. and now Halo 2 is about to come out... where is the PC version?