Exactly 24 years ago today, Microsoft acquired Rare, ending its long partnership with Nintendo and securing all future Rare games as Xbox exclusives. The anniversary comes just days after Microsoft announced a major studio restructuring that places Rare under the control of Call Of Duty studio Activision.
It is too soon to know how this will affect Rare, especially given the studio has not released a new game since 2018's Sea Of Thieves. The outcome is bleak for one of the oldest and most fondly remembered British game studios. Aside from Codemasters, owned by EA and now making only racing games, Rare is the last major British developer from gaming's infancy still standing.
From Ultimate Play The Game to Nintendo's second-party star
Rare was making games as early as 1983, under the name Ultimate Play The Game. Titles like Jetpac and Knight Lore for the ZX Spectrum were among the most popular of their time, though Rare is better known among 90s kids for its Nintendo partnership.
Nintendo never fully owned Rare but bought enough stock for it to be viewed as a second-party developer, independent but making games only for Nintendo. That led to Rare revitalising Donkey Kong with the Donkey Kong Country platformers, and creating fan-favourite Nintendo exclusives like Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing.
That is why Microsoft's outright acquisition was such a shock. Some fans still haven't forgiven Nintendo for not blocking the move, but given Rare's output in the early 2000s had already dipped in quality, Nintendo apparently didn't consider buying the company outright to be sensible.
The buyout as a red flag for Xbox's acquisition spree
In retrospect, most of Microsoft's current Xbox woes can be traced back to the Rare buyout. Many see the 2018 spree, when it bought six game developers, as the start, but Rare was the first and should have been a red flag to studios Microsoft approached.
Microsoft had only just entered gaming and needed first-party studios. Rare's reputation made it an obvious pick, but the timing was unfortunate: all of Rare's projects, designed for Nintendo's hardware and audience, had to shift to a new console with a different demographic. Rare's Xbox debut, Grabbed By The Ghoulies, a cartoony horror-themed beat 'em-up, failed to make an impact with an audience defined by Halo: Combat Evolved and Project Gotham Racing.
There is nostalgia for Rare's Xbox 360 output, such as Viva Piñata, but by the Xbox One era it was clear nothing the studio made sold well enough to appease Microsoft. Established franchises and new ideas were shelved in favour of family-friendly sports games for the Kinect, with 2015's Rare Replay being the only acknowledgement of Rare's history, though it couldn't include Nintendo-published games.
Sea Of Thieves: a double-edged success
Microsoft's view of first-party developers was coloured by the Xbox 360's success, and it began to see them as less important, since the console usually hosted the best versions of third-party games. That led to the Xbox One's early focus on TV capabilities over games, and eventually to Phil Spencer taking over and recognising the need for a stable of developers. The subsequent purchases of Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard have proved detrimental to Xbox, the acquired studios, and the industry, as Microsoft has shut down several studios and put thousands out of work.
Rare's survival can be chalked up to Sea Of Thieves, a rare example of a live service game maintaining enough popularity to warrant ongoing support, with 21 seasons' worth of content. But that success is a double-edged sword: because Microsoft got a certified live service hit, it's all Rare has been allowed to do for eight years. An attempted Battletoads reboot was barely involved with the studio, and its one original game, Everwild, was cancelled, with Rare admitting it didn't know what sort of game it would be.
Rare has become a shadow of its former self, doomed to work on one game until its popularity wanes. Sea Of Thieves still attracts several thousand players on Steam, but how long that will be good enough for Microsoft is unclear. What Rare's new position under Activision means is uncertain: will it operate as normal, or will Activision interfere to drive up engagement and revenue? Some see the move as a chance for a new Banjo-Kazooie revival, but the people responsible for those childhood favourites have long since departed. There's no guarantee things would have been better had Nintendo acquired Rare, but they certainly couldn't have been worse.
