Rare, You Are the Weakest Link. Goodbye!

By RandX

In case you haven't heard, Nintendo recently sold Rare, makers of Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Conker's Bad Fur Day, the upcoming Star Fox Adventures, and other games, to Microsoft. Nintendo seems content with the loss, while Rare seems rather upset. Personally, I was tickled pink to hear the news, since I've always had a strong dislike for Rare. I personally thought that while their games have some merit, they were always way overrated by the masses, but I won't get into that. There are good reasons why losing Rare may actually be beneficial to Nintendo.

First of all, while Rare was a key player in keeping the N64 alive, they have been a dead weight recently. Nintendo of America states that "in fiscal year 2001, Rare accounted for only 9.5% of total Nintendo software revenue worldwide. In fiscal year 2002, that number declined to 1.5%. Therefore, in evaluating our investments in developers, as well as the financial benefits to Nintendo over the years, we've decided it's in Nintendo's best interests to focus on diversifying our portfolio of developers and projects." I don't know much about business, but I do know that 1.5% is rather meager. Perhaps Nintendo made the wise choice here. Besides, now that Nintendo has sufficient third party support, it's not like this loss is going to kill them.

Of course, Nintendo made a bundle after the deal. Question is: What are they going to do with all that dough? People speculate that they will buy Sega as a second party to replace Rare. Let's certainly hope so. Sega has been pumping out great titles for the GameCube so far, and there are far more games scheduled for future release. While Sega develops for everyone now, they seem to be brining most of their games to the GameCube, including the Sonic franchise.

Besides, was Rare really that good? You have to take into consideration the fact that part of the reason their games seemed so good is because of the scarce N64 library. Of course their games ranked high; there was virtually nothing else to compare them to, since there are few N64 games and many of them flat out stunk. And be honest, would any of you really have paid attention to Conker's Bad Fur Day if not for the adult themes? Would their games fare as well today on the GameCube, assuming that they were upgraded for the console, and considering there is a wider array of games out there? I doubt it. And as far as I'm concerned, they certainly don't hold a candle to Sega. In short, Rare is really only average; they aren't these master game designers everyone makes them out to be. Bye bye Rare. Have fun making games for Microsoft. And Hello Sega.

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