RAREWARE IS OWNED BY MICROSOFT
09/11/02

I can remember as far back as the NES days when cool games like Battletoads (Developed by Tradewest and Rare) were made, for years Rare has been a big part of the Nintendo landscape. They were involved with classic N64 titles like, Banjo Kazooie, Killer Instinct, Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007, Conker's Bad Fur Day, Perfect Dark, and more recently Star Fox Adventures. As it were Nintendo had a finanical stake in RareWare for quite some time. There had been a lot of rumors about Rare possibly being bought out by someone else and Nintendo letting them go as a sole developer for the GameCube.

Nintendo previously owned a 49% stake in Rare. With Rare's software contributions amounting to only 9.5% of total revenue in Nintendo's fiscal 2001 year, and 1.5% in fiscal 2002, the publisher weighed the benefits and drawbacks of making additional investments in Rare and decided against it. Since Nintendo felt it wasn't worth their effort and financial resources to keep Rare along for their ride, other parties were in the running to aquire the development studio. Activision and Microsoft were both interested in acquiring Rare, but it was Microsoft who won out and provided the asking prices for the developer and Nintendo's 49% stake in it. Nintendo sold all of its shares in Rare, according to insiders, and the studio's second-party status was terminated.

Neither Nintendo or Microsoft have made an official announcements regarding this reappropriation. Not everything about the separation has been finalized though since both Rare and Nintendo are discussing which liscenses and properties belong to whom. For instance Perfect Dark is entirely a Rareware developed game, however Donkey Kong and Star Fox originate from Nintendo. Of course I'm sure that Nintendo wants to hold on to their characters for dear life considering their image is at stake if they lose those identifiable properties. This all kind of reminds me of the whole SuperNES CD and Phillips CDI thing. Somehow Phillips retained a liscense for Zelda, and produced those three CDI Zelda games. Sony as well used it's research on the SuperNES CD to make the Playstation.

You know, when I look back at what Rare did for Nintendo it makes me wonder what they were thinking in letting MS take them. Most of the N64's top selling games came from Rare. In fact practally all the games I actually wanted to play on the N64 were produced by Rare. If it wasn't for Rare the N64 would have been totally done for, and Nintendo would probably be in the same boat SEGA is in today. All I figure is that Nintendo has once again shot themselves in the foot and taken a bite out of the stupid sandwich. Okay, so Rare wasn't a factor this year, well guess what, the GameCube's linup throughout most of late 2001 and 2002 was pretty much junk, except for a couple B+ titles. By holiday season this year, that will change of course but it just seems that Nintendo's lack of faith in Rare might not be so smart. Nintendo has made some very peculiar decisions, that make me wonder if they even have any kind of idea or connection to what gamers want anymore.

As it is, Microsoft has officially become like the Borg, they assimilate all, while competitive resistence always remains futile. I can imagine that hopefully many great things will come from a partnership between MS and Rare, but of course this all could have been done by Nintendo had they maybe come up with some bold and innovative ideas for Rare to run with. Ah, yes, good old MS, the same monopolistic empire that brought us buggy and unstable incarnates of Windows, and flooded our machines with Microsoft Windows Media Player, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft, Microsoft Messenger, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Office (but of course you have to pay $500 for this - yeah, right), and Microsoft Network.

Letters to Nintendo regarding Rareware produce the following:

BACK TO VIDEO GAMER X