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Game Studio Flight From Microsoft A Sign of Troubles?
Newsweek's LevelUp blog continues to produce some highly interesting material. Today they have up a look at the 'flight' of game studios from Microsoft's corporate umbrella. BioWare's purchase by EA distances it a bit from their cosy relationship with Microsoft, as does Bizarre's purchase by Activision. Bungie's departure from the company itself goes without saying. So what does all this mean? Is this a sign of troubles in Redmond, or just more fallout from the huge undertaking required to get the Xbox 360 to the position it has today? "For us, the flight of the Killer B's is a clear indication that Microsoft as a whole is still shell shocked not only by the massive losses in the Xbox division, but also more importantly by the poor showing of Rare, which has to rank as not only one of the Microsoft's least successful purchases, but as quite possibly the worst acquisition in the history of gaming. Microsoft paid $375 million in cash for Rare, and based on the modest revenues from its ensuing titles--a Conker's Bad Fur Day remake, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero and Viva Pinata--all they've got to show for it is that proverbial lousy T-shirt, completely stained with red ink."
Since when was either Studio owned by Microsoft? This is such a fluff piece for a slow gaming "news" week.
Nintendo made them DO STUFF. I remember reading something in 2001 where Rare complained that Nintendo was "working them too hard" or something along those lines. Well, at least they had something to show for it. And by "something" I mean games that set new standards in their respective genres, from Goldeneye for FPS's to KI for fighters to DKC for side-scrolling platformers, and everything in-between. Rare kept the N64 afloat because their games were semi-frequent and they all were pure awesome.
Now it seems Rare has gotten lazy, and MS let that happen. Nintendo's probably been laughing their butts off at all this. AS IF Rare could have made $375 mil for Nintendo if they'd been this lazy releasing games for GCN.
I like basketball!!1!
This article came off very strange. It seems like trying to create a story out of nowhere.
Last I heard MS was already making a profit on the 360, due to the cost coming down quicker than expected. Yes they took that billion dollar charge, but as I understand it each one sold is still profit at this point.
Add onto that some pretty killer titles in the last year and MS has made some cash. Halo3 alone would offset any losses in the last year I would assume. (Short of the charge).
If you read the statement Bungie released on their website it sounds more like what MS did was pull lots of companies into the fold, in order to foster the growth of its image as a gaming company. Now that they've established their beachhead, they can let those companies go sink or swim on their own merits.
I think Rare is the perfect example of why MS is letting the studios go (though still in publishing agreements for many of them). With a good partner relationship MS doesn't take on the risk of a studio starting to turn out poor quality product. At the same time, its become a large enough, established enough player, that those publishers will pay attention to MS, even if they aren't subsidiaries.
They seemed to do pretty well when they were playing nice with Nintendo. I wonder what is it Nintendo was doing for Rare that Microsoft isn't, or what Microsoft is doing that Nintendo didn't.
And yet there was a reason Nintendo was willing to part with them. Remember, Rare was not an independent company - MS bought them from Nintendo.
Rare's output was dropping for years before the sale. In their last three years of development for Nintendo, they released five home console games: Donkey Kong 64, Perfect Dark, Jet Force Gemini, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Starfox Adventures. Of those, only Perfect Dark could be called a legitimate hit. (DK64 sold well as a pack-in game, but it wasn't what you'd call a top quality game.)
A lot of people were pretty shocked at the price MS paid for them. This isn't just a 20/20 hindsight thing - many people said at the time that it was a dumb purchase. There were some hardcore hopefuls who thought otherwise, but this was not a purchase that was universally praised at the time.
And while this doesn't really apply to a studio like Bungie that's buying themselves, whenever one publisher is all too willing to dump a development studio onto another publisher, you have to ask yourself why. It's always a big red flag, and it seems obvious now that Nintendo knew something that MS didn't. Not about how to run Rare, but about how far Rare had really fallen.