It’s-a-Me, Banjo!
Rare wants Banjo to become Xbox mascot
To celebrate Banjo’s 10th anniversary in Europe today, Computer and Videogames has offered an especial interview with Rare’s Senior Director Mark Betteridge and Nuts & Bolts‘ producer Rich Cousins. On it, they share some thoughts about the well known broading-audience role of Rare on Xbox, the future of the BK franchise and a tentative release date for BK XBLA.
Surprising enough, from the very beginning, Mr Batteridge reveals his clear intentions of turning our fave bear in the Mario-like mascot of the Microsoft console: “We think the time is right for Banjo to be a mascot character for the 360, that’s the key point. The price of the Xbox is less than it was at launch, there are more casual customers buying consoles, so I think there’s now a really good opportunity there. It’s a unique game in the 360 line-up, it’s a game that the 360 needs.” Obviously, the comparation with Nintendo’s mascot jumps in the conversation, and Rare’s Studio Head comments about it: “Certainly as a mascot character Mario is fantastic, and that would be wonderful, to have Banjo mention in the same breath as 360 in way that Mario is with Nintendo. That would be wonderful. That’s certainly an aim.”
But it’s no less obvious that Microsoft already has its own star: Halo’s Master Chief is the clear reflection of the average audience of the Xbox system. However, Mark Batteridge thinks that “Banjo is a mascot character that we could use in different ways on the 360 where Master Chief wouldn’t be appropriate. That can help expand the market and establish Banjo as a character.” Appropiately enough, he doesn’t hesitate to empashize how the honey bear is well known even in places where the Xbox has serious marketing problems, like the Asian market: “It’s a proven character that’s had success all around the world. Banjo had success in both North America and Japan, which is very, very difficult to do.” Then, can we expect Banjo getting his own spin-offs for Xbox in the future? Batteridge seems to be thinking about it already: “We could position Banjo in other games that aren’t necessarily “behemoths” in the way that this took four years to make. We’ve got a lot of ideas on where to take him forward, some of them maybe less game conventional than you’d expect.”
That leads to the new direction of the BK franchise in the upcoming Nuts & Bolts and the reason why Rare couldn’t just make a third installment with the same idea of Kazooie and Tooie with better graphics: “I think this genre needs a Halo, in terms of replayability. That’s what we’re trying to put into Nuts & Bolts. We can’t just build a hi-def version of Banjo and think that that’s the Halo of this generation. We need to add something more to it. There hasn’t been a platform game sell 10 million, that’s not been done since perhaps Donkey Kong Country.”
The recently announced return of Banjo on Xbox Live Arcade coinciding with this anniversary was also on the spot, with some extra titbits of info, including a tentative release moment: “It runs better on the Xbox 360 and there’s always going to be a market for that, as Nintendo’s shown with Virtual Console on the Wii. It just made a lot of sense to do that project at the same time as Nuts & Bolts, maybe release it slightly before as a bit of a teaser and then come out with the 360 version. I’m not sure about the exact timing, but that’s how the conversation came about.”
Would then be possible for Nintendo to get the chance of getting Banjo on Wii’s Virtual Console as well? After clearing up that Rare “still has a good working relationship with Nintendo,” Batteridge assures that “it would have to be with our blessing; I guess that’s a question for Microsoft who owns the Banjo IP now.” Then,
wouldn’t be nice an exchange of good intentions so we could get GoldenEye on XBLA, while Wii gets Banjo on the VC? Let’s all cross fingers, once again!
Hopefully, we may offer you some extra details of both titles in the near future. In the meanwhile, you should remember that to commemorate BK’s anniversary, we are running an exclusive contest in which you can win a Nuts & Bolts signed and unique piece of concept art if you put some effort; would you lose this golden opportunity?
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5 Comments
Although I like the idea of Banjo becoming the Xbox mascot, there will be millions of stupid Halo fanboys throwing a fit over it.
Comment by JollyRoger — 18.Jul.08 @ 2:42 pm
I think having banjo as another mascot along with the cheif would be great he has good games that apeal to more casual people and some hardcore
Comment by xGREYHUNTERx — 19.Jul.08 @ 3:59 pm
I don’t think Banjo could ever become a mascot in the same sense as Mario. As in, *the* mascot.
He could be the Xbox mascot to a different crowd, though. If Microsoft managed to make the Xbox brand (ugh, I hate that word) mean different things to different people, then Banjo could always be the face of the Xbox’s more family-orientated, colourful side. But Master Chief will always be the mascot to the current Xbox crowd.
I think of the Xbox, and I think of Halo. Even the original Xbox logo had green seeping out of it, matching Halo’s tech-heavy, alien world.
I could actually see Microsoft ditching the Xbox name for something that sounds less like the name of a videogames console. Something more family friendly. Perhaps Banjo will fare better if that happened?
Comment by SummerSky — 19.Jul.08 @ 11:06 pm
I think him as a mascot would be awesome go banjo!!!
Comment by saicambanjo — 18.Jul.08 @ 12:20 am