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Rare faces layoffs of nearly 20 employees after Kinect Sports Rivals sales flop
UncleSporky
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Via Eurogamer:
CVG revealed the damages:
Losing Sutherland is the saddest thing. While I feel obligated to hate him irrationally for Battletoads, I respect him for the breadth of his work. I was under the impression that there was no one left at Rare who had been part of the old school teams.
Microsoft-owned developer Rare has suffered layoffs after the release of Xbox One exclusive Kinect Sports Rivals failed to set tills alight, Eurogamer can reveal.
Multiple, separate sources indicated to Eurogamer that the studio, which has focused on the Kinect Sports series in recent years, had recently suffered layoffs.
A Microsoft spokesperson issued Eurogamer the following statement this afternoon:
"At Xbox, our goal is to constantly create new fun, social and interactive entertainment experiences. As part of Rare's commitment to this goal, we have made a decision to change our development process and methodology at Rare to best support our future projects, this has led to us reviewing the skills and the makeup of our development teams in our business.
"Rare continues to invest in our people and future projects."
While Microsoft did not confirm how many people had been let go, Eurogamer understands the number is around 16, a figure one source said was made up of some software staff, but mainly design and project managers. Kinect Sports Rivals was a 150 person project.
Microsoft also declined to explain why the changes were made, but the sales performance of the recently-released Kinect Sports Rivals may have played a part. It had been intended as an Xbox One launch title, but was delayed to April. When it did release, it entered the UK all-formats chart in 14th place. One source indicated to Eurogamer Rare suffered a significant loss on the project.
CVG revealed the damages:
Sources close to the studio indicated that just under 20 employees are set to depart, including veteran programmer Chris Sutherland, who has worked on Rare games for more than 20-years.
During his distinguished career Sutherland acted as lead programmer on Battletoads, as well as all three Donkey Kong Country and Banjo-Kazooie games. He's also known as the 'voice' of the latter's bear and bird protagonists.
CVG sources indicate that designer Gavin Price will also leave Rare, after a 15-year career which saw him work on Viva Pinata, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and a number of unannounced, cancelled projects.
Both Sutherland and Price worked on the Kinect Sports games.
Losing Sutherland is the saddest thing. While I feel obligated to hate him irrationally for Battletoads, I respect him for the breadth of his work. I was under the impression that there was no one left at Rare who had been part of the old school teams.
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Speaking of which, there's been word Microsoft/Rare are currently evaluating how to proceed at Rare now that Kinect's out.
Truly sad to hear.
It's typically not a council decision.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
At the time, Rare was lost in the woods without a bonafide hit and Nintendo knew it. Just look at what Rare put out during the entire run of the oXbox -- Grabbed by the Ghoulies and a port of Conker. Kameo and the next Banjo took multiple console generations and bargeloads of money to finish, and neither sold well. As much as Rare beefed up the anemic release slate of the N64, from a business standpoint it's hard to argue Nintendo didn't get out while the getting was good.
Still a shame what happened afterwards. Viva Pinata had some great ideas even if its audience was a little muddled (too complex for kids, too "teh kiddy" for adults), and Banjo: Nuts and Bolts was inspired. They got some magic back, even if it took a while. And then it was all flushed away on aping Miis and Wii Sports.
Perfect Dark Zero
Low blow
Even though it wasn't made by Rare, the reception to Killer Instinct was extremely good and I'm baffled why Microsoft hasn't tried to capitalize on that more.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
There was another Xbox launch title, too, right? Kameo?
Have to disagree with you Rorus, as while it wasn't a platformer in the traditional sense that people wanted it was still an incredibly creative game. It's one of those things where I sit down and wonder "If this had been its own IP, would it have been given more of a chance and been widely praised for its creativity and ideas today?".
But kind of like other games like the XCOM TPS and so on, it was the wrong IP using the right kind of game mechanics. So that's all it ever gets remembered for.
The problem was there were only like five objectives. Race,soccer,escort,catch,and use a peice of shit they designed to do one of the other objectives.
Instead of making these huge levels worthwhile and designing them to.encourage you to build weird crazy cars to help you get jiggies we got huge mostly empty arenas
However, within those objectives was a huge variety of freedom and ability to completely fuck with what the game expected. For example, building a car in a race that could capture the other vehicles, dump them in a cage and then detach off so the entire race is literally stuck in this absurd device and you can stroll to victory unopposed. Or playing soccer with a vehicle that could capture the ball, lift it into the air and make it impossible for the others to stop you.
The levels I agree weren't used to the maximum, but the actual individual objectives they did had a huge variety of approaches for anything you could build for. The entire game rewarded you breaking it in interesting and creative ways, which is rare in games and that's what made it such a delight.
What if the Banjo Kazooie museum actually resembled a museum but it had sections of old school levels as exhibits instead of looking like a garbage dump. Or of the space station had sections in space? Or if any levels were half as good as the hub world?
So much potential wasted
I was intrigued by this and read up on it.
...It sounds like Kerbal Car Program. Which seems like it would be awesome.
Just... yeah, it should not have been a B-K game, nor should a B-K game been it.
It sucks because the version of conker we could have gotten looked like a proper Successor to Banjo-kazooie
Yeah, I remember actually being excited for the original version of Conker. When I heard what they were doing with it in the end, I lost interest.
Steam: pazython
Changing the IP of Nuts and Bolts isn't going to get us another classic B-K platformer anytime sooner.
Kameo was a pretty rad 360 launch title.
People were probably mad because it had been such a long time between Banjo titles; Mario Kart, for example, only came out after the traditional Mario title for the SNES. If Rare had developed a traditional platform adventure on the latest hardware first, then released the spin-off game, people (probably) wouldn't have had such a negative reaction.
Fuck, I never saw any of that - the game we got was already hilarious and unbelievable, what more was there?
It's not that it was "better", it's just that I wasn't into crude humor. That's all.
Steam: pazython
Maybe it's just me, but it actually makes them sound worse when I read it. "Hey guys! We're shit canning our staff! Everyone put on a big smiley face; new opportunity awaits!
You don't have to be harsh or callous about it. How about expressing some fucking empathy, saying that you're sorry about the downsizing, admitting that it's a bad situation, etc. Of course, the really good reaction would be for the management / executive arm to take a pay cut instead of laying off the people who weren't responsible for the shitty high level decisions that resulted in catastrophe for the company, but whatever - that's clearly an unrealistic fantasy in today's world.
I'd at least like them to talk like they're not characters from some twisted Disney cartoon.
Also, they removed the awesome multiplayer for a shitty proto-TF2 or Modern Warfare type of game.
The remake was infuriatingly schizophrenic. It re-did the shitty levels in the campaign to make them entertaining... and then stripped-out the best part of the old game.
N64 Conkers was some of the best party game multiplayer I've ever experienced. The asymmetrical mode where one player tries to run civilians across a beach while the other player's Tediz use machine gun nests to try and stop them is such a hilariously good time that I'm surprised nobody has since replicated it.
I think one of the few modes that didn't work was the dinosaur vs. cavemen mode, as the asymmetry just didn't click the way the beach level did.
Oh, the Tediz ones is the best. There is nothing quite like sighting in a friend running hell for leather across the bridge using a rocket and getting that perfect shot off.
It's because you don't get Mario Party or Kart instead of a platformer. You get both, frequently. With Banjo, they had us wait an entire console generation and then did a bait and switch. Which prompted a hearty "fuck you guys then" from me and much of the existing fanbase.
I would be equally unenthused if Capcom announced Mega Man Legends Kart, just as an example.
I feel like you only get to call it a bait and switch, in this instance at least, if they announced it as a platformer all along then went "nah guys it's Scrapheap Banjo" at the last minute. Since I wasn't following it at the time I don't remember if that's what they did, but I would be surprised.