Gallant Pig

Where does it say the Stampers are leaving?

Trigger

You would think so...

SpacemanSpiff

hey, is starfox controlled by nintendo or rare

i doubt nintendo will let the licenses slip

o well, nintendo was all about first party anyways

NeonGlow

Star Fox is a Nintendo property. The first Star Fox game was developed by Argonaut for Nintendo.

Groucho

Misleading thread title. The Reuters article says "Mulls." Not a done deal yet, but it will happen I am sure.

ScandalUMD

The Stampers leaving is the whole thing. They are the 51%. They want to retire or something. They offered Nintendo the deal, and Nintendo declined, so they went looking for another buyer.

Why would they sell their company, and then hang around and work for somebody else?

Gallant Pig

You seem to be jumping to conclusions. Part of the deal could very well be the Stamper bros. running the place for another X amount of years.

Josh H

Gallant, they owned 51% of the company, it was their baby. They wouldn't sell it if they wanted to stay involved. It's not jumping to conclusions, it's just common sense logic.

Gallant Pig

It's jumping to conclusions when nothing has been announced yet. We'll see what happens though. If nothing else, I see them taking on at least some sort of creative consulting role.

Gallant Pig

Wasn't ScandalUMD the one who thought there's no way on earth this deal could be happening? How's that crow tasting big guy??

dek

Josh H

Gallant, they owned 51% of the company, which means they were getting a good chunk of change on game sales. Why would they give that up, (sell their entire stake) and still be involved with the company.

If they wanted to stay involved, they probably could have negotiated for MS to buy Nintendo's 49% stake, and kept there 51%.

You'd have to be an imbecile to sell a 51% stake, and stay with the company.

They just wanted out for whatever reason.

My guess is struggles to make games up to their standards with all the talent that's left over the past few years. That is speculation.

Trigger

What game sales?

darkside

How so. Who's to say Rare would have made that much of a difference on the Game Cube. Microsoft may put new energy back in the company and they may achieve things for Microsoft they never would have for Nintendo. Like making deadlines and more than one game a year for instance.

I still think it could be a very good deal for both companies. Microsoft gets a good developer with a known name and Nintendo may use their money from the sale to replace Rare or at least to develop some new AAA titles for themselves.

Hell, It could end up being a flop for both companies the crazy way things go sometimes.

Flay

According to the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS), it appears that the licenses that Rare owns are

Perfect Dark
Joanna Dark
Kameo: Elements of Power
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Jet Force Gemini
Sabre Wulf

These are owned by Nintendo:

Star Fox
Donkey Kong
Banjo Kazooie / Tooie
Killer Instinct
Blast Corps

spankyj

I'd have to think that part of the deal involved simply buying the name. I'm not too sure on who's leaving, staying, talent left etc. But I can guarantee you that most people recognize and look forward to games with the Rare recognition. Microsoft would be able to heavily sell their first couple of Rare titles regardless of quality on name alone. That is why they didn't go out and create their own - Goodwill.

spankyj

Joanna Dark, Perfect Dark & Conker. Ouch - that hurts for Nintendo. Looks like no PD0 on Cube, the whole reason I wanted to get one.

jeffdsmith

Thank god Nintendo still has Blast Corps. Now we just need a sequel! The GC controller is perfect for that game.

Bye bye Rare...

I'm going to miss PD0, loved the first one. Xbox owners should be really happy. Of course I'll still get to play all the games, but it won't be the same.

And to those people that think Rares games are much more suited for Nintendo. Keep in mind, there is going to be quite a bit movment around inside Rare. They may change there gameplay focus. In addition I'm sure MS promised to market the hell out of their products. Something Nintendo didn't always do the best...

Ralph Wiggum

Aside from Goldeneye, PD and Blast Corps. all of Rare's other games are in genres that Nintendo themselves do better IMO. If all the talent behind Goldeneye are really at Free Radical then I don't see this as much of a loss except for the name Rare.

I hope that they've been doing something aside from SA this last year and that they get back on track to do something more interesting than all of the mascot platform games. There is definitely still talent at Rare, how much is anyone's guess.

parrotheads4

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Originally posted by Josh Hinkle
Gallant, they owned 51% of the company, it was their baby. They wouldn't sell it if they wanted to stay involved. It's not jumping to conclusions, it's just common sense logic.
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More often than not buy outs include demands made by the buyer. Sports contracts are similar. "We'll pay Alex Rodriguez $25 million a year, but he has to do promotions, comercials, etc." While I hate all evil empires (Walmart, Microsoft, etc.) they've gotten where they are because they make smart descisions. If the rumor is true that this is a done deal, I'm sure the brothers signed a retention contract. Debating the number of years might be another reason for the announcements delay.

ScandalUMD

Well, I knew the Stampers were trying to get out, but I had no way of knowing at that time that Nintendo had already turned them down.

There was very little information, and most of the time rumors don't turn out to be true. Like the one about Microsoft buying Take 2 after GTA3 came out.

I hardly think I should be embarrassed for dismissing unsourced speculation.

jeffdsmith

This is from Bloomberg, a small qoute by Nintendo.

ScandalUMD

Well, we were boosting Rare when we thought they were staying with Nintendo, so it's hypocritical to start bashing them now. They've made some great games, but Nintendo has more internal development now, and better third party support, and I guess they figured they could do more with $500 million than they could with Rare, which is probably a safe bet.

If the Stampers leave, then Nintendo probably got the better end of this deal, but that doesn't really matter, because this suggests that Microsoft is far more dangerous than I had given them credit for. They do, as many have mentioned, have very deep pockets, and they appear, at this juncture, not to care about getting back the money they pour into the Xbox.

The Xbox Live system has no way of paying for itself, and Microsoft seems not to care. All of Rare's N64 games probably turned about $500 million in retail revenues. To make that back in profits for Microsoft, they'd need an awful lot of hits. Microsoft seems not to care about actually making money on the Xbox, and that gives them a huge advantage over Nintendo and Sony.

If Microsoft does not require a plan to recoup its investments in developers, its purchasing power is virtually unlimited. Vivendi-Universal, Square, Capcom, Konami, Take 2 and any other developer you can name is a possible acquisition for Microsoft. That's up to and including Activision, EA, and Sega.

I still hold that the Xbox faces more obstacles than either of the other consoles, but all of Microsoft's problems can be be solved with enough money, if Microsoft doesn't care about the Xbox making that money back.

I might argue that Microsoft's nasty feud with NVidia over the cost of the Xbox graphics chip may discourage NVidia and other chip makers from dealing with Microsoft on a future console, but the Rare deal makes it plausible that Microsoft could simply buy NVidia or ATi if they need someone to develop a new graphics chip.

What it comes down to is this; If Microsoft is really willing to lose bottomless amounts of money to do it, they could seize the games industry from Sony and Nintendo. They may very well end up with Vivendi and Sega all under their umbrella, which would give them first-party assets that would rival if not surpass. Of course, even if they could become the only show in town, it would be decades before such an investment could possibly break even.

ScandalUMD

This is a stock sale, not a sports contract. When company founders sell their stake to a larger company, they rarely stick around, and I've never heard of a stock sale including a condition where the sellers were contractually obligated to work for the buyers as a condition on the sale.

As for Microsoft making smart decisions, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But people tend to brush Nintendo off as being second rate. Nintendo is enormous. They're known for smart decisions as well, and, thus far, they haven't allowed themselves to be bullied by Microsoft.

Microsoft took a bath on MSN, Time Warner merged/sold out to AOL which was a mistake. Enron went belly-up. Phillips made the CDi. Circuit City pushed DivX. Nintendo made Virtual Boy. Square made a movie. Sega made the Sega CD, the 32X, and the Saturn. Big companies make bad decisions all the time.

Nintendo's gotten where it is by making smart decisions as well.

It's entirely possible that Microsoft has been snookered on the Rare deal. From our vantage point we really have no way of knowing.

Josh H

I've never boasted on Rare, look at the other thread. I said, to paraphrase, that I didn't care where they went from a business stand point as they don't put out enough games to make much of a difference in the console race, and didn't care where they went from a gamer stand point as I've always thought they were over rated.

The only pre-N64 game of theirs I liked was the first Battletoads. On the N64 I loved Goldeneye, Blast Corps, and Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie.

I did not like DK64, Jet Force Gemini, Conkers Bad Fur Day (it wasn't "mature," it was stupid), Diddy Kong Racing, and Perfect Dark was mediocre, and no where near as good as Goldeneye.

Nintendo owns the license to Blast Corps and Banjo Kazooie, and Rare no longer has the Bond license, so there won't be another goldeneye.

Even somethings I've read say that Nintendo and Rare are bickering over who owns the Perfect Dark name, though that's no big deal as it was a fairly generic FPS and Rare could just put a new name and new character in it without losing much.

But anyway, the point is that I'm not being hypocritical, because I never said anything postive about Rare. They're slow and overrated IMO.