Microsoft has been sitting on their own mario/astrobot and for 20 years has continually just said “nah”. this is why they’ve been in last place for over a decade.
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That and the spectacular failure that was the original Xbox one concept. That destroyed all the good will they had and followed it up with 343 killing their biggest franchise. Once halo died it was over for Xbox so this doesn't surprise me sadly
they also now own Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, which were set to have several more games made. however, recent news shows theyd cancelled ALL of them, shut down the studio developing them, and dont seem keen on ever touching the IPs again
That's where I found out that the rrason why Microsoft bought Banjo in the first place was because of Donkey Kong, not realizing that DK was owned by Nintendo. This is like buying FromSoft and finding out you still don't own the rights of Bloodborne lol
Funny thing is, they were almost on to something. Modify it a little bit and it's essentially Tears of the Kingdom. But yeah, Xbox and Rare both didn't know what they were doing at that point.
As much as I loved Nuts & Bolts as a little kid, you can tell just from playing it that RARE saw all of this coming from the very start. L.O.G. constantly jokes about Nuts & Bolts sucking in comparison to previous titles, or even RARE’s other games like Viva Piñata. You can TASTE the cynicism.
Tbh they could be very up if they just kept up with Banjo even if it was as little as Sony's kept up with Astrobot. If they just released one game per console they'd at least have an exclusive to market
"Nobody cares about Banjo-Kazooie! What's that Nintendo? You want Banjo-Kazooie for your ungodly popular cross over fighting game featuring some of the most beloved characters in the medium? Sure people would LOVE that... Anyway nobody cares about Banjo-Kazooie!"
And unfortunately the current staff at rare doesn't care about banjo either, they'd rather work on sea of thieves and the old employees who didn't already left to join playtonic
Seems like MS is doing just that recently. Banjo Kazooie, Tooie, Perfect Dark, Blast Corps, GoldenEye, Battletoads, Jet Force Gemini plus a few others all made it to Nintendo's Online Service. Not the perfect world but Rare felt like it was on the way out with Nintendo at the end of N64 anyway.
Also look at what happened with the development team for Hi-Fi Rush, which was Microsoft’s best reviewed game in years. Microsoft had shut down the studio that made it this year but thankfully, a South Korean publisher called Krafton saved the company from going defunct.
To be fair, they don’t have a good track record. Their goal might be to take as many Ls as possible, they kill everything they touch 😂 they bought Skype that shit died, Xbox got ratioed hard af by Playstation, and they bought Minecraft just to piss off that community with their terrible updates
Ironically, the marketing directors of megacorporations always seem to consistently know the least about what the consumer market actually wants. If these companies weren't already such cosmic horror levels of size and influence, I don't think they'd be able to survive the ever-changing market.
Microsoft has consistently screwed themselves in the gaming field since inception. I won't deny it was a powerhouse in the early Halo/Gears era but now a days it's just holding onto its shooters (CoD, BF, Halo) cause that's most of what's keeping it alive.
It's because they made some bad games out of Rare's IP when they first bought the company, and instead of saying, "Maybe our changes to these franchises were ill-advised," they pulled a Principal Skinner and decided, "No, it's the gamers who don't care about these IPs any more."
Damn, if only there was someone that could make people care about a franchise in the market, maybe someone that could do some kind of campain of... Of...? I don't find the word...
On one hand, I feel this. But on the other hand, if they're just talking about the current Xbox crowd/mainstream gamers, they're not too far off the mark.
A shame, cause they could've really cultivated the IP early on as another one of their longrunning series, but now it just sits in the IP graveyard unfortunately.
You literally have no idea how salted and seething I was when I read the title of that article, and then read that the person who said this tried to backpedal and say that it does matter— like be so fr. Just sell the franchise off then to someone who actually gives a shit ffs.
I hate how companies will release a game in a series that just doesn’t work for it (chibi robo zip lash/nuts and bolts) and decide this means no one cares about the franchise rather than people wanting an actual game that makes sense for said franchise
I feel like they saw Nuts n Bolts severely underperform and labelled the whole franchise as "Not Good". And since then have not bothered ever relabeling it despite Banjo and Kazooie being popular enough to be demanded by fans and licensed out to be in Smash Ultimate. Talk about heads in the sand...
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but all the Big 3 have their own little quirks we have to deal with 🫠
I hate them, I hate them so much.
I'm big on Xbox but please just give these guys back to Nintendo already.
Unfortunately for Banjo & Kaz, Nintendo has a ton of other characters. They won’t spend a dime on Rare as it is.
World of Warcraft classic
The game director was asked at a con if they would ever consider making a classic version of WoW
He said “No, you think you want this but you don’t”
Couple of years later, he announced the classic servers to the world
It’s funny to think about how these companies can easily prove themselves wrong but choose to ignore the signs in order to chase trends