Rare in the wake of Ensemble’s closure
Hopefully the ground\'s not so shaky around here
An ongoing hobby of his, the reaper often likes to visit Microsoft’s first party developers and take them to a better place. After Ensemble Studios was claimed as the latest victim in this “corporate reshuffling” last month, would it seem outrageous to consider Rare’s long term commercial safety? MGS head Phil Spencer would urge you to dispel such thoughts, as he outlined the importance of their internal studios in an interview conducted by GamesIndustry.biz.
As part of their concentrated UK development resources, Rare and Lionhead Studios are “incredibly important to MGS” Spencer assured. “The productivity and effort in those two studios is just great to see.” Given Rare’s fifth 360 retail game hits shelves next month and Lionhead’s reported multiple projects behind the scenes, the claims are certainly well founded at this point: “For Rare, this will be their fifth game in the first three years of the Xbox 360 - that’s crazy. Two launch games? What studio on the planet signs up for two launch games? That’s just crazy.” So, with both houses providing key titles for Microsoft’s holiday lineup, it also seems their parent has confidence in their performance- well, at least with Gears of War as collateral.
But productivity isn’t the crux of the issue. “An important part about those studios, and the creation of the MGS organisation in Europe, is for our platforms to succeed here,” Spencer continues. “We don’t want to build games that will only sell in one market.” So it’s not so much references to Chewits that’ll win the race outside of America, but more something like the Avatars and Lips. “[Lips] obviously has some specific European markets that it will do exceedingly well in, but we’re going to market it and talk about it as the global game that we think it is.” Spencer’s worldwide ambitions are admirable, but it remains to be seen if the advertising budget follows through for Banjo and others. It’s an uphill battle outside Microsoft’s home turf, but on the bright side, their constant determination in countries like Japan would lead us to believe that they’re not likely to cut ties with Rare’s demographic-widening output any time soon. We hope.
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3 Comments
Same. Rare brought me into video games with Donkey Kong Country and have kept me in all these years. If Rare dies, so does my interest in the Xbox 360.
Comment by TheWalrus — 07.Oct.08 @ 11:23 pm
You know what! Rare is actually one of th emain reasons I bought a 360 at launch. I would also lose much intrest in 360 if Rare left.
Comment by Perfect Dark 0 — 09.Oct.08 @ 2:35 pm
When they will close Rare, I will stop playing Video Games !
Comment by Tntnico — 07.Oct.08 @ 8:32 pm