11th December 2003, 8:41 PM
That's an understatement of the year award candidate...
Rare is now learning what they should have known before they did this: You get what you ask for. You asked for a company that will give you more freedom to do games or wanted less control over your content or something... well you got that. The consequence is what you should have expected: A corporate parent that is like most everyone in the industry except Nintendo: fairly strict adherents to deadlines. So that classic Rare thing of delaying a game for several years until you actually finish it? Microsoft won't let you do that much... and we now see what unfinished (or un-polished-enough) Rare games look like.
They look like SFA and Grabbed by the Ghoulies...
And of course this doesn't cover the 'you will lose some top talent when you go to a major company like MS' thing that they also experienced.
Can they improve? Yes, of course, this is just one game. I just don't know if they'll ever be quite the same as they were...
Rare is now learning what they should have known before they did this: You get what you ask for. You asked for a company that will give you more freedom to do games or wanted less control over your content or something... well you got that. The consequence is what you should have expected: A corporate parent that is like most everyone in the industry except Nintendo: fairly strict adherents to deadlines. So that classic Rare thing of delaying a game for several years until you actually finish it? Microsoft won't let you do that much... and we now see what unfinished (or un-polished-enough) Rare games look like.
They look like SFA and Grabbed by the Ghoulies...
And of course this doesn't cover the 'you will lose some top talent when you go to a major company like MS' thing that they also experienced.
Can they improve? Yes, of course, this is just one game. I just don't know if they'll ever be quite the same as they were...