Why did Microsoft buy Rare anyways?

[o_z]

Did they just decide at random that they wanted it and bought it with Bill Gates' sack of cash? Or was it something else?

[LaorBR]

Let's go back in time, shall we?

1993 => The best of Nintendo/Sega consoles war happent this year.

1994 => bye bye genesis. Super Nintendo starts to reach its peak.
Rare gets much attention world wide thanks to Donkey Kong, and becomes a second party of Nintendo.
Sega rushes the development of its new system, and surprises everybody releasing the "Sega Saturn" before everybody. But it was so much rushed, it got messed. Making 3d games for it ended being more difficult than it should be. There were almost no games released with it in Japan.

1995 => Sony releases the Playstation, with a handfull of lame games (though everybody loved them just because it was Three Dee). Bye bye Super Nintendo.

1996 =>Nintendo64 released. Mario64 released. Nintendo is very confident.

1997=> Saturn is died already. Nintendo has a good time, but game developers start to left nintendo because of the many memory restrictions of the cartridges. Nintendo promises to fix that with the 64DD.

1998 => Rare at its peak, Nintendo64 sells well (thanks to Zelda) and everybody is happy. Playstation builds a lot of reputation thanks to a company called Square. 64DD still being promised, even more companies left Nintendo.

1999 => Dreamcast is released, Sony gets all of the best gaming franchises on its system. Nintendo64 gets through a time without many releases, only few games are new, most of them are crap.
Thanks to all that, Rare game releases in that year (Jet Force Gemini and Donkey Kong64) don't get much atention.
64DD is cancelled for good, because it was too much expensive, nobody care about it at Japan.

2000 => Nintendo64 is almost gone. Banjo-Tooie is released, but didn't make the same succes of BK. Maybe because all of the other systems kicking @## while the N64 was almost died?
Nintendo seems to care more about Dolphin (Game-Cube name at the time) than N64.
Playstation2 released in japan, once again, only lame games, but everybody bought it because "OMG 1T'S DA N3W GENERATIONRZ OF GAYMING!11"

2001 => You can say the 32/64 bits era is over for good. Only crap being released everywhere. Even the Dreamcast is died and buried, thanks to bootlegs (pirated games).
Rares tries its best and released the so-long delayed Conker's Bad Fur Day. A lot of money was put in this project.
But the game sold really bad in the end. GameCube came out this year.

2002 => Nintendo blames Rare for them always making expensive projects that don't sell well. Rare is sold to almighty Microsoft.

Of course no nintendo-fanboy will ever realize that Nintendo64 working with cartridges instead of CDs was a big, fat mistake.
Maybe if they used CDs, everything could've been different?

The reason Nintendo used Cartridges was because of the pirated games.
Even though the copy protection of some games for playstation were almost impossible to be cracked. (Final Fantasy 8, for example)


And here we are today.
All this was written based only on my knowledge, and a bit of Googlism. There must be some small mistakes, but you can trust me, everything there did happen.

[machanist]

wow
wasnt nintendo origionally a gaming card company before they made games?

[LaorBR]

Yeah, they were. But that was so much time ago.

Actually nintendo saved the game industry after the "video game crash" of the 80s.
I advice you doing some googlism about this, it's a nice story. In the end Mario has saved the video games world :D
Well, at least his game called Super Mario Bros did.

But saying that "if wasn't for nintendo the gaming market would have dissapeared" is nonsense.
Probably the arcades would keep the video game market up even if nintendo didn't appear with mario bros.
But the games wouldn't be like they are today.

[Gaming Master2k]

On the E3 access 2004 DVD it has the history of gaming. It's very good, 10 great minutes. I suggest picking up E3 Access for any year, shows you all the games coming out plus more. I have 2004 and 2005. As I'm in Australia and can't get there it's the next best thing.

[LaorBR]

=(
I'm brazilian and I can't go to E3 neither I can buy this DVD.
I didn't even know there was such thing.
Well... as long as I got google I'll be fine :)

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot to say that Rare became a second party of Nintendo in 1994 thanks to Donkey Kong. Fixed.

[Jason]

If you're that upset about this whole ordeal, blame Nintendo, not Microsoft. Nintendo wanted them gone...

Personally, I think Rare is better off with Microsoft.

(What has it been? 4 years? And we're still talking about this?)

[lamentofgrunty]

no n64 is coming with revolution which is suppose to be better than xbox 360 and all the others

[Avis]

LoL Where did ya get the info that Revo is better than Lunch Box....Err PS3 and Xbox360?

[thebanjo]

If you're that upset about this whole ordeal, blame Nintendo, not Microsoft. Nintendo wanted them gone...

Personally, I think Rare is better off with Microsoft.

(What has it been? 4 years? And we're still talking about this?)

YOu've forget to say that Rare wanted to see Nintendo to buy the whole capital of the society.

[lamentofgrunty]

LoL Where did ya get the info that Revo is better than Lunch Box....Err PS3 and Xbox360?

my friend

[Kaz da Breegull]

Lament, that's only an opinion. That, and they haven't even been RELEASED yet. How can you know?

The history of gaming is pretty neat, I agree. *nods* It'll be sad to say goodbye to the current generation; Final Fantasy XII and Twilight Princess will be the last good games for the PS2 and GCN, most likely. I still have my Saturn, actually; just for NiGHTS, really. :D

(Also, on FF: I personally believe that 12 will be the last game in the series. There's no way Squeenix can come out with another good FF game without Uematsu, Amano, and Sakaguchi with them.)

[LaorBR]

Final Fantasy XII and Twilight Princess will be the last good games for the PS2 and GCN, most likely. I still have my Saturn, actually; just for NiGHTS, really. :D

LoL talking about the demon...
FF isn't going to be the same from now on, M$ bought the only three guys who have been working on Final Fantasy since the very first game.

They are:
Hironobu Sakaguchi -- Director
Micro$oft bought him and gave him a company of his own called "Mistwalker", that only does games for M$ now, of course.

Yoshi-taka Amano -- Character Design (though since FFVII he's only doing illustrations)
he also is working for Mistwalker. By the way, FFXII character designs are totally awful.

Nobuo Uematsu -- Music Composition
His music RoX. He's been working as a free-lancer artist recently, he made the music for Xenosaga EP.1 and thankfuly he's doing the music for FFXII.
But he's leaving the gaming industry to work on his rock band, "The Black Mages". At least M$ doesn't have nothing to do with this one.

And last but not least, FFXII battles are going to be a hybrid of Action RPG hack 'n slash (ala seiken densetsu/secret of mana) and Turn-based battle system.
(HAHAHA eat that Zelda haters! Who is saying Action-RPGs aren't true RPGs now?)
But I still prefer the good old Active Time Battle.

Well, this is just my opinion, but to me Final Fantasy has oficialy died after chapter IX... New things are good, but when they change the old too much, it's just not the same series anymore.

Reason for editin: huehuehue the forum censored Yoshi-taka's name. His name actualy doesn't have this hyfen.

[Kaz da Breegull]

Yep, I know about FF12. *nods* It looks like it'll be pretty good! The mix between action RPG and ATB elements should be interesting.

Mmm, I *love* Uematsu's music. I love the work he and The Black Mages have done thus far, and I can't wait for their next CD! I won't be happy until I hear a remix of Dark Messenger. :D I personally like Amano's art a lot more than Nomura's; it's much more unique, especially his designs for the FFVI characters. I'm not all that fond of FF12's character designs myself; they're all too similar!

I liked FFX and X-2 (gasp!), and I haven't played XI yet. I still need to play 2, 3, 4, and 5. I own 2 and 5, though. *sage nod*

[LaorBR]

LaorBR's profissional old-school Final Fantasy guide: Advanced Edition

FF I and FF II: these ones have a lot of similarities with dragon quest and lord of the rings. I only saw my friend playing the first one, it's still fun, after all those years. I recomend the GBA version.

FF III: First FF to have class (jobs) customizations. Though I didn't play it very much.

FF IV: Don't play the easytype plz! I suggest playing the fan-retraslated FFIV on a SNES emulator. Great game, with a catchy storyline and characters, but the battle system is kinda confusing. But it's the only FF with 5 characters simultaneously, so it's good anyways.

FF V: battle system rocks, IMO it's the Final Fantasy where the character customization worked the best. But the story line is SO much clichéd, it's really a shame.

FF IV: One of the most famous and respected FFs. Like FFIV, a catchy storyline full of action and memorable characters and events. 'Nuff said. I like how the moogles make part of the story in this one.

I beat IV, V and VI. Me and my friend got very far in FFI, but we never finished it.
Huhuhu just talkin about these games make me happy =)

[Kaz da Breegull]

Yep, I own Dawn of Souls. *nods* I liked the DoS remake of FF1 much more than the one on Origins. PHOENIX DOWN. *dies* I'll try to get around to playing 2 and 5 soon!

I *loved* 6 so much. I'm playing it for the second time now; such an awesome game. Who's your favorite character? Mine's probably Edgar, with Celes and Terra close behind. But still, who doesn't love Kefka? :D "SON OF A SUBMARINER!"

[LaorBR]

For batling: Sabin (HADOUKEN ON YOUR FACE!!)
Storyline wise: Locke and Celes
I started liking Celes better after that part where you only have her on your party, and that stuff with Cid and the letter... I guess I should play FFVI again...
Been so much time I forgot many things...

[Jason]

my friend

Your friend lies.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 are supreme compared to what we know so far about the Revolution.

From what I hear though, the graphical power of the Revolution is up with the Xbox 360... Oh, mystical!

[LaorBR]

From what I hear though, the graphical power of the Revolution is up with the Xbox 360... Oh, mystical!
Hmm I heard the exact oposite, that nintendo was looking for gameplay and low prices instead of graphics, and revolutions graphics aren't going to be any better than our current generation.

Well... I don't care much about good graphics anyway, as long as the game still looks cool...
For example, take any Neo Geo game. It's a really outdated system, but good old SNK still managed to make cooler characters than Capcom and theirs flashy fighters. I still prefer Kyo Kusanagi rather than Ryu, no matter how many thousands of animation frames he has.

But snk is gone, so I think I'm the only one who thinks like this ;_; ...booo...

What I still don't get it right from nintendo is how a remote control is supposed to be "revolutionary".

More importantly, if Revolution is going to have a built-in emulator for n64 and Snes games, how are you going to play them with a remote control?
Just imagine banjo with a remote control... ugh!
Worse yet, imagine a fighting or a racing game...

[Minjo]

I think they were also producing a classic style controler, go check the thread.