Rare Won’t go Back to Older Franchises, Even Though They Have Been
Rare has been on a bit of a retro kick recently. With the recent release of Perfect Dark for Xbox Live and last year’s release of Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, it looks like the company was trying to take advantage of its past. That’s apparently not the case. In a recent interview, the head of Rare Mark Betteridge said that he doesn’t see a need for the company to go back and work on previous IPs.
Speaking with Develop, Betteridge said “It’d be nice to go back to these projects that have been successful in the past, but that doesn’t mean we will.” He went on to say “We’d only go back to older franchises if we saw an opportunity to make the product in a different way that would do justice to that, not just for the sake of it.” If you happen to take a look at the list of recently released Rare games, you can clearly see how Betteridge is full of crap.
The last three games the company worked on are simply graphical upgrades of games they already sold millions of copies of. Other than the addition of the Stop N’ Swop in the Banjo titles, there isn’t anything different about them. Apparently, this is “doing justice” to those games, “not for the sake” of making money. If Betteridge is going to say something like this, he should have evidence to back up that his company isn’t trying to replay the good old days of high-profile N64 releases (which they are).
News Tags: Banjo, Interview, Perfect Dark, Rare, Xbox Live
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Most of the old talent from the N64 days is gone from Rare and has been gone for a while. I couldn’t care less about a new Rare IP.
So am I the only one who thought Viva Pinata and Kameo were great?
The less said about Perfect Dark Zero the better.
Viva Pinata 2 is the best game Rare ever made imo, and is easily one of the top 5 360 titles. I’m really really hoping that their unannounced Natal title is a new VP because that, for me, would be a Natal-seller.
If this interview was given before those last 3 XBLA ports came out, I’d understand your point, but it seems like Betteridge is just talking about where Rare’s priorities lie as of that date(March 26th, 2010). Saying that he’s full of crap seems a little harsh.
Yeah, Rare’s last 3 releases have been XBLA ports, but in 2008 they released a new Viva Pinata game, as well as Banjo Nuts and Bolts, which I can honestly say is the best game of 2008, by a landslide.
@Naughton: Both Nuts and Bolts and Viva Pinata were old franchises though. The last new IP from Rare was in 2006.
@ParaParaKing: Yeah, I understand that, but Viva Pinata was only the second in the franchise, and Nuts and Bolts was the first Banjo game in 8 years(and only the 3rd major Banjo release since 1998). It makes no sense to criticize a developer for this…
@Naughton:
I would agree with you…if Rare had something to show off. Sure, Nuts and Bolts was a pretty good game, but it was an old IP. As I said, I think they’re trying to relive their glory days, and releasing a sequel (however unconventional it was) of an 8-year-old game was their attempt to do that. Then they moved on to releasing ports of older games.
If Rare wants to come out and say that they don’t want to do what they’ve been doing for years, then they need to have something to show off. When’s the last time you heard anything about a new game Rare was releasing? All I’ve heard is some cryptic mutterings about Project Natal stuff. I’ll take back anything I say about Rare here, if they show me they’re actively not living in the past.
@Pendelton: Is anyone else(including Mircosoft) showing off their Natal stuff? Why hold Rare to a higher standard?
@Naughton: I hold them to a higher standard because of the quote from Betteridge (what this article is about). If he hadn’t said that, I’d be waiting patiently to see what Rare was up to next. But he specifically said he’d only go back to older franchises if he could do justice to them. I don’t think releasing an HD version of an old game does it any justice; it seems like a money grab. I just want Rare to show me something so that I can believe what Betteridge is saying. I don’t care if it is or isn’t their Natal stuff, I just want to see something.
You haven’t done much in the way of research on this, Rare didn’t make the Perfect Dark, Banjo-Kazooie or Banjo-Tooie XBLA versions.
They were ported and developed by 4J Studios!
You seem to have read an article and just assumed it was accurate without your own research. Journalism Fail!
Still I agree that Rare needs to let their old franchises go, and begin working on something more fresh. If Nuts and Bolts hadn’t been a Banjo title it would have been looked on a look more fondly by people.
@NEONswift: Ok, then I’ll change my argument. Rare needs to get off their ass and actually do something rather than ship off their lame ports to other companies.