I always liked Ed Fries when he worked on the original Xbox. He seemed like a nice guy who genuinely enjoyed gaming, and he was about 1,000,000 times better than that corporate douche J. Allard. That was until I found out that it was all his idea for MS to buy Rare. Yup, it's all his fault. Fuck you, Ed Fries!

I don't know. Everyone is so pissed off at the fact that Retro is now making brilliant 2D platformers because they should only ever make Metroid games; why is Nintendo forcing them to make platformers?! So it's probably not fair to say that Nintendo would have kept Rare in exactly the same state that they left Nintendo in. Nor that everyone would be happy if Rare did anything slightly different to what they'd already done...or if they were still the same, be sick of Rare 3D platformers.

If you read the actuality of what happened with the Rare sale, it seemed Nintendo only owned a large minority share with the option of buying out the Stamper Bros 51%. But the clause was that other people could bid for that controlling stake and Nintendo would have to beat out that bid. Microsoft waded it and put down a massively high amount of cash and the Stampers were greedy lazy bastards who wanted to be millionaires then just retire and give up. You could have had a situation where MS could own a controlling stake with Nintendo as a minorty party and how would that work? At that point I think during the development of Kameo and Starfox Adventures they saw Rare becoming less prolific so thought it was better to drop them. They were also in this situation where 3rd parties were complaining about how Nintendo 1st and 2nd party IP dominated the platforms.

With regards to cube and wii for instance I do not think they could match the N64 era given the more time, money and staff required to make more graphically capable games. With GC they made starfox and could probably do one more game. On Wii perhaps 2-3 games. On Wii U, for a big game? Perhaps 2 titles?

aspro said:

Yeah Miyamoto had no respect for Rare.  I doubt anything would have been different.  What western developer has Nintendo ever bought or even mentored to greatness?

It has to be western? I'm not sure on the "bought" part but the partnerships and mentoring has gone pretty well, Silicon Knights and Eternal Darkness and MGS. Next Level made Punch Out Wii and Luigis' Mansion 2, they got NST in America who made the excellent Wave Race Blue Storm, helped Monster Games make the Excite series. Produced the excellent Lego City with TT Fusion. Of course Rare and Retro, Metroid Prime, Banjo etc. Then in the east, Monolithsoft for Xenoblade and partnered with Arika to make the amazing Endless Ocean 2.

I remember reading that Rare 1st gave Nintendo the opntion to buy, and Nintendo declined. To me, that basically comes down to Nintendo at that time caring about nothing more than their bottom line...not thinking of the future. Then their PR guys went on the loose in interview after interview "We realise this is going to be hugely disappointing to our fans, but its the right time for our companies to part ways" blah blah blah.

No matter what MS put down, Nintendo could have paid it. I'm not sure on this, but they didn't have to own more than a majority stake right? So 51% gives them control? I know there were plenty of chances in the past when they could have easily upped their stakes in Rare. Its sad too because Nintendo had just paid for Rare's brand new studio a few years earlier.

Normally when a company does under or become something less, it doesn't bother me much. But in the case of Rare, being the incredible developer they were and the situation they were in, it just seems incredibly cheesy and lame on all accounts, and really feels like what happened to them shouldn't have happened.

edgecrusher said:

No matter what MS put down, Nintendo could have paid it. I'm not sure on this, but they didn't have to own more than a majority stake right? So 51% gives them control? I know there were plenty of chances in the past when they could have easily upped their stakes in Rare. Its sad too because Nintendo had just paid for Rare's brand new studio a few years earlier.

That's not the way it worked, they weren't given the option of buying a few more percent to gain control. It was all or nothing and like Nintyfan said, other companies could bid and Nintendo's right to buy had to match any high bid given. Microsoft steamrolled in and put in an inflated bid to secure Rare. Then Nintendo sold it's remaining 49% to Microsoft. I don't know what would have happened if Nintendo retained nearly half but still not having a controlling stake? Would Rare make 360 games or Wii games? Both?

There's a massive article here about who killed Rare

Article said:

"N64 had been disappointing for Nintendo - well, in comparison to the success of SNES - and GameCube didn't look like it was going to change their fortunes. Back in testing at the time we were stupidly cocky and thought that Rare was the hottest studio in the world. There was all kinds of gossip about potential buyers. It felt exciting rather than nerve-wracking, which probably shows how far off the mark we were. Microsoft didn't even crop up as a potential buyer until late in the day. I believe there were already some substantial dealings with Activision before Microsoft appeared as a potential buyer."

In fact, Rare had been looking for a potential buyer for some years by the time discussions with Microsoft began. "The company was on the market for several years, two years certainly, and this was driven by the majority owners Tim, Chris and Joel Hochberg," says Hollis. "The majority of middle management were enthusiastic followers of the idea but I always felt uncomfortable. EA, Activision, Disney and obviously Nintendo were all mooted. In the end I understand Mr Yamauchi [Nintendo's President] declined to offer more than a fraction of the value Rare was asking; shrewdly, it would seem. Meanwhile Microsoft had a strategic reason to buy, two reasons really: firstly so Nintendo would not have Rare's games, and secondly so that Microsoft would."

At the time, Ed Fries, the architect of Microsoft Game Studios and the broker of the Rare acquisition, believed the developer was out of bounds. "A few years before the acquisition, I had a chance to meet the Stamper brothers for the first time," he says. "We spent about an hour together and got to know each other. At the time I didn't think an acquisition would be possible because of their close relationship with Nintendo. It was a couple of years later when people from Rare reached out to us to explain what their situation was.

"They were 50 per cent owned by Nintendo and Nintendo had an option to acquire the other half of the company by a certain date. If they didn't exercise that option then Rare had the option to find a buyer for Nintendo's half. Nintendo had already extended the option by one year, but it looked like they weren't going to acquire the other half of Rare, so the Rare guys started looking around to see if anyone else might be interested. We were a logical choice for them to call."

"I probably heard about a buyout officially when Tim and Chris sat down with all the leads to talk with them about it," says Tossell. "They were very open in regards to the options and what it might mean. Initially I think there were three possibilities: Nintendo, Activision and Microsoft. We actually had a show of hands in the meeting to indicate which of the options we preferred, but obviously in the end it was really down to major shareholders..."

Fries knew that other publishers were courting Rare, and, despite making a fast move, it looked as though Microsoft had missed its opportunity. "We knew there were other bidders," he says. "We wanted the company and made an offer, but were told that Rare had decided to go with Activision instead. I was desperate for more experienced console developers and there just weren't any other companies like Rare on the market so we raised our offer, but were told they had decided to go with Activision. Then the Activision deal fell apart for some reason and so they came back to us and asked if we were still interested. We said we were and the deal was completed relatively quickly."

So Rare was looking for a new owner for "some years" already and the sale was pushed by the 3 majority owners. Once their one shot deal passed and they became uber rich the drive for excellence ended. Nintendo probably did not manage Rare, but acted as creative partners and financial backers. But once Rare thought they were hot shit and make tons of money from a buyout, even if Nintendo bought them would the management have remained the same with the same inevitable decline? I'm sure you've read the massive clusterfuck that happened at Retro for instance.

More from the article:

"The problem here was that Rare was a very long way from the very corporate structure of Microsoft and when Rare had made games it wasn't in isolation from Nintendo but as a creative partnership. The kind of support that Nintendo offered wasn't available at Microsoft because Microsoft hadn't the experience."

"Two years after the acquisition, the announcement came that the Stamper brothers were leaving the company to explore new ventures "Meanwhile, Rare's games became unsuccessful. The other money-based motivation of shares was a one-shot. Once it paid off I guess Chris and Tim lost all interest and energy, effectively sitting out their stipulated term. This passivity percolated down through the whole company."

If I was Nintendo I would make a new UK studio and put the call out for ex-Rare and Eurocom developers and make a dream team to build exclusives. There is lots of British talent that worked on great Wii games to get too, Climax who made Shattered Memories, Headstrong- the HOTD Overkill team, Eurocom makers of Goldeneye and Dead Space. And then they could even poach some ex-Free Radical staff too.

"Want to know something painful?"

Sounds more like heartwarming than painful.