Okay Geek Farm
Microsoft boss: "Innovation" is what Rare says made them drop off the map
Ricardo Trejo
For many seasonsed gamers who grew up during the SNES and N64 era’s it’s hard to imagine the good ol’ days without classics like Donkey Kong Country, Banjo Kazooie, or Goldeneye being mentioned. That’s how special the Rare studio was back then! However in more recent times, it’s taken a back seat and focused on much different sights — becoming a 1st party developer for Microsft and coming up with Kinect Sports. So… what happened? Innovation apparently.
In an interview with Chris Henson, a Microsoft dude who was given the job of oversight on Rare last October, Industry Gamers got a chance to get the scoop on what some might calll one of the best development studios of its time.
In response to ‘falling off the map’ Henson had this to say:
“We didn’t fall off the map. We might have changed and evolved. Our focus is different, but we haven’t fallen off the map. Fallen off the map is interesting when you sell over three million units. I like that falling off the map. It’s great success in this industry.
If you look at what Rare has done, whether it was Killer Instinct in the arcade or Donkey Kong Country and pushing pre-rendered graphics, they always innovate as a studio. That has stayed the same. The studio created a new beloved franchise in Kinect Sports. There’s more than three million people that have this in their homes, playing and loving it. The difference is we started from scratch, instead of something people know, like Donkey Kong.”
[…] we delivered as much to the platform as any other studio. With the success of Kinect Sports and what I believe will be a successful Season Two, I think Rare lived up to its potential.”
Will we ever see a Killer Instinct 3 or a real sequel to the Banjo Kazooie series? Unfortunately, that answer is at the mercy of the Microsoft exec’s who now tell Rare what to do. And right now the demand is for Kinect Sports: Season 2 due out later this year.
