Molyneux: Nintendo Made Rare Too Secretive

[castlezelda]

Lionhead boss and newly appointed creative director of Microsoft Europe Peter Molyneux has been speaking exclusively to Gamesindustry.biz about his role in assisting Microsoft's internal development teams - with Rare being one of them.

Molyneux - who founded legendary UK software house Bullfrog (Populous, Magic Carpet) before starting up Lionhead (Black & White, Fable) and joining forces with Microsoft - had this to say about Nintendo's former cohort:

I was totally blown away from the amount of talent that there is at Rare, but it's just that they come from a background where Nintendo required them to be this very, very secretive company.

I just want to give them the confidence to tell the world what they're doing. I hope you're going to see more from Rare and I want to help them get well known.

During the time it was owned by Nintendo, Rare was indeed quite a withdrawn company. However, many believed this to be down to the Stamper brothers (both of whom have now left the firm) and their perceived distrust of the video game press, rather than Nintendo stopping the outside world from having any access to the studio that created such hits as GoldenEye 007 and Banjo Kazooie.

Perhaps Molyneux's comments show the true story? Whatever the truth may be, we're pretty sure that all Nintendo fans still have a soft spot for Rare, despite the fact that it's no longer in the Nintendo fold.

heres the link http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2009/06/molyneux_nintendo_made_rare_too_secretive

 

[raisinghelen]

Peter Molyneux has no clue what he's talking about there. Nintendo didn't make Rare secretive, they were that way back when the company were known as Ultimate: Play The Game, which was in the 8bit days long before they became involved with Nintendo.

Part of the reason why the company was so detached was because they hated the media, especially after being publicly blasted on a UK games show. The other reason was that they did not have enough staff to be able to attend game shows or showcase products, all their time was spent in development.

Rare's lack of quality titles since joining Microsoft has nothing to do with them being shy either. Most of the talent that made the great N64 games had left Rare before Microsoft bought them, so they basically just bought the name while the talent had already left to join Nintendo, Sony and the rest formed Free Radical.

 

[oogtra]

Rare's lack of quality titles since joining Microsoft has nothing to do with them being shy either. Most of the talent that made the great N64 games had left Rare before Microsoft bought them, so they basically just bought the name while the talent had already left to join Nintendo, Sony and the rest formed Free Radical.

Just one thing about free radical...didnt they go bankrupt? Anyway that is true, because of that leaked star wars battlefront 3 gameplay footage that was developed by free radical looked pretty nice...thats where the talent went. But, I think they went bankrupt and arent making anymore games.

 

[raisinghelen]

Yes Free Radical went bankrupt last December, due to the economy and probably partly due to the amount of money they blew on Haze.