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Rare Co-Founders Leave Company
1up reports on the departure of Rare co-founders Chris and Tim Stamper. They, along with company president Joel Hochberg, founded the company more than two decades ago. They've been with Rare through the good (Wizards and Warriors) the great (GoldenEye), and the disappointing (Perfect Dark Zero). The news site now reports they left the company at the end of last year. From the article: "The Stampers' exodus comes just four years after Microsoft acquired Rare from Nintendo for $375M. Since that acquisition, Rare has published five games for Microsoft Game Studios. In addition to Pinata, the Rare released Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero at the Xbox 360's launch and shipped Conker: Live & Reloaded and Grabbed By the Ghoulies on the original Xbox. While it seems unlikely that Microsoft has recouped their original investment in Rare, the company maintains that the studio is 'the cornerstone of Microsoft Game Studios' broadening strategy.'" N'Gai, over at Newsweek, has an interesting additional viewpoint on this departure: Phil Harrison's view on Rare. The unpublished exchange from his earlier interview with the PlayStation worldwide studios boss is interesting, as is N'Gai's blunt appraisal of the company since its purchase.
just four years after Microsoft acquired Rare
Just 4 years? In the gaming industry 4 years is an eternity. How many of todays game studios existed 4 years ago? How many of the game studios of 4 years ago still exist today?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I wonder if they've partnered with the Google.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This is fucking great. Now who the hell is going to make Killer Instinct 3?
I seriously doubt Microsoft bought Rare with the intention of making huge profits off them. For a game company to make back $375 million they have to throw a pretty good number of big titles out there (3 Halo 2-sized ones or so). No way Microsoft expected that. I think it was more than anything part of their "we have so much money to burn let's just do it now and then bet on profits in the next console generation" plan, which involved hamstringing Nintendo by taking away their most important developer.
After all, if not for Rare, N64 would not have had half of the game lineup that it did. Banjo 1 and 2, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Diddy Kong Racing, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Jet Force Gemini, Killer Instinct Gold, DK 64. A monster list, really. And they also made the SNES's final two years great with DKC, DKC2, and KI. Microsoft likely wanted to deprive a major competitor of such a game lineup more than anything else.
Rare was worked hard by Nintendo. They released something like 2 games per year. Microsoft hasn't done that to them at all. In fact, the first game Rare released after Microsoft acquired them was for the Game Boy Advance (that silly Banjo game).
Granted, it wasn't the same Rare anymore at that point anyway, and of course some time had to be taken to get used to writing for the Xbox rather than Nintendo's systems, but IMO nothing points at Microsoft expecting a profit from their purchase of Rare any time soon (if ever).
I like basketball!!1!
I wonder if they are going to rest on their buyout or start another game company. Of course, I guess that depends on if they are under a non-compete agreement.
I'm still shocked that Microsoft bought Rare; they were already on the downward slide during the N64's lifetime (which could arguably be said to have started with Banjo Kazooie as a far more colorful and better designed game than Mario64 (which to me always seemed more like a really fun demo). BK was awesome, Diddy Kong Racing was a much better version than MarioKart, and GoldenEye was their zenith. After that, what more did they release? Banjo Twooie, which was in no way what had been eluded to, but seemed like a warmed-over DK. Perfect Dark Zero? Sorry, Laura Croft was still too much in her heyday to start another "chick-with-guns-oh-my!" franchise, and it too had the warmed over glow of a GoldenEye codebase with different graphics. Conker's Bad Fur Day was the real tell-tale sign of a slide. It was, I believe, the last cart released for the N64 by anybody, and instead of something cool, we got a South Park inspired DK (again!).
Then they basically sat out the XBox, Ghoulies notwithstanding. To think that after, what, 4 years, the best they could come up with was a mediocre platformer (again a modified DK ripoff) and then a *port*? An almost 1-for-1 port of BFD? *That* was the best they could come up with?
Meanwhile I recall reading an article about Rare's headquarters, and how they have these "sheds" with developers busily working away on games. What games? What justifies having such a large operation and put out the same warmed-over stuff again and again. Oh, right, they were working on the 360 launch title. What was that ground-breaking game? Perfect Dark Zero? No, really, what was it? I must have missed it.
The Stamper brothers are living proof that there are people who can sell snow to Eskimos. I would love to have seen the song-n-dance they threw for Microsoft to justify the price they paid. Microsoft threw their money away on a has-been who have been locked into this DK/GoldenEye glow for waaaay too long.
I too loved Conker, and especially loved the ending. That they managed to pull a genuine and moving ending out of a crass parody of platformers and action movies just proves how brilliant that game was.
I'm not sure why but I never got too far in the remake though. I always meant to pick it back up, but I only got a couple hours into it. They somehow managed to create the most convoluted and confusing interface for the multiplayer ever... it might be the most fun XBL game ever made but I wouldn't know since I couldn't even figure out what my goals were in the matches.
I guess that means I'll never get that remake of Atic Atac I'd hoped for :)
Seriously... good for those guys. They produced some of my favorite games of all times (Lunar Jetman, Jetpac, Atic Atac, Sabrewulf and so on) and they deserve to retire and take it easy. Rare hasn't been Ultimate in a LOOOOONG time, and their games in the last few years have been mere shadows of really good games. About time guys.. go... relax... enjoy.
These comments seem rather unfair, do Rare constantly churn out killer games? No, sure they don't, however they do churn out the odd killer game, and when they do that game dwarfs all others in it's success. No one can argue the success of the Donkey Game series, particularly the earlier ones but more importantly, Goldeneye on the N64 is the largest selling FPS game of all time with only Halo 2 coming a close second - it beats Doom, Doom 2, Quake, Half-Life, Half-Life 2. Even if Rare only pulls off these kind of successes once every 10 years, they are still making higher average sales per year for 10 years for that success than most other games manage in their lifetimes.
You're correct in saying Perfect Dark Zero wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't but only in the sense that not many games are nowadays, it was still a platinum title, which puts it pretty high up the success list, very few games reach platinum each year.
Rare has around 3 - 4 development teams active at any one time, whilst I'm not sure what they're doing now that Viva Pinata is released, I know at least that a few months ago they were working on the next installment of Conker, Viva Pinata and Kameo 2 - they also mentioned they had a small group of developers developing for mobile devices so that's what their developers are upto!
Kameo is a really good game, I think it's a set of IP they can really build on also, Viva Pinata is the kind of game everyone can play too, Rare certainly isn't stuck in terms of new ideas. Whilst they are going downhill, they're only doing so in the sense that it's pretty damn hard to outdo yourself when you've managed to produce the best selling FPS game of all time - in this respect pretty much every developer is going downhill when measuring up to the success that was Goldeneye 64.
Now, I'm no real Rare fanboy (personally Donkey Kong was never my thing, neither was Perfect Dark or Conker), honestly I didn't know a lot about them until I was at a Microsoft game developer conference back in March last year but when I realised the titles they had pulled out, and did a little research into them I began to realise that Rare is one of the major players in the video game industry, we're talking about a company that dwarfs id Software, Valve and so forth in terms of units of all games sold per year - that's no small acheivement. The only fault I'd say Rare has is that it's rather media shy, such that people don't know as much about them as they probably should - they're an important player in the industry.
One final thing to note is that Microsoft didn't buy Rare to sell games, they bought Rare to sell consoles - Rare's existence no longer hinges on whether they make the next killer game or not, they can try new things, they can fill niche areas nowadays which I'd guess is why they've developed Viva Pinata - to fill the lack of games for young kids on the 360. Goldeneye 64 is certainly the game that sold N64 systems and without being able to buy Square Enix or Nintendo - other firms that produce games that make people want to buy consoles Rare is an extremely sensible purchase for MS, it's a solid bet that can consistently churn out platinum titles with the odd absolutely killer console-shifting title once every 5 - 10 years.
"They've been with Rare through the good (Wizards and Warriors) the great (GoldenEye), and the disappointing (Perfect Dark Zero)."
What the hell? Me, many people I know, and many professional game reviewing sites and magazines all seem to agree that Perfect Dark Zero was a great game.
Still a shame they are leaving.
The Stamper brothers offered first sale of their 51% share in the company to Nintendo. When Nintendo declined the offer, they also agreed with the Stampers' plans to sell to the next bidder on the list, Microsoft. Nintendo sold their 49% back to the Stampers so as to remove themselves immediately from any press about a potential bidding war that would look like they would ultimately lose (a distortion of events they themselves were setting underway), then the Stampers sold and Microsoft bought. There was no secret transaction between Nintendo and Microsoft over Rare. It was the Stampers playing middleman.
If anyone doubts this, remember one thing: Nintendo never had to sell their 49%. Nobody could have forced them to do that. They could have held on to it and Microsoft would have been left in the cold, holding 51% in a company that they shared with their rival. Nintendo sold because they saw the sense in doing so. At the same time, MS would never have had to buy if Nintendo didn't sell first. They would have required that Nintendo release partial ownership before agreeing to anything with Rare. In this way, MS had the least powerful hand in these three-way negotiations - they played the role of willing buyer waiting for two partial owners to figure out how to split the payment.
The Stampers, guaranteed, would have had to come along with the company as part of the deal - but the required period has likely expired, leaving them free to leave rich men.
In short, the Rare sell-out was not profitable for Microsoft or for Rare itself. It was profitable for the Stampers and for Nintendo. MS will likely never profit from the deal, except by making sure that Rare never develops for a competing platform again. (GBA and DS are not in deirect competition to the whole Xbox project, so that's why we have and will continue to see Rare games on both platforms.)
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Battletoads, Wizards & Warriors, Snake Rattle and Roll, Solar Jetman, RC Pro A.M., DKC, Goldeneye, Banjo & Kazooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day... so many great games! R.I.P....
fuck M$!
I don't feel like it...