by Paul on May 21st, 2014

Sad news from Twycross … the poor performance of Kinect Sports Rivals since it was released last month has prompted Microsoft to carry out a review of Rare’s internal set-up and they have decided to change their “methodology” going forward. No idea what that means, but the news comes in the same week as Microsoft’s announcement that Kinect will no longer be bundled in with the Xbox One. The folks in Redmond must have finally conceded that the Kinect bubble has burst, something most of us had known for some time. The result of all this is that twenty or so Rare employees are no longer working with the company.

There has been a long-standing rumour, denied by Microsoft and Rare many times, that Microsoft imposed the Kinect-only way forward onto Rare. True or not, we can surely expect to see a move back to more traditional controller-based experiences from Rare now. We are hopeful that the first titbits of information about Rare’s future plans will be revealed at E3, now only a few weeks away. A return to existing IPs and their games of old, or something completely new? Whispers on the net pointed to new titles within the Perfect Dark and Battletoads series, although these have been subsequently denied by Microsoft.

Our thoughts go out to the Rare employees affected by this news. This is such a shame and we hope that they all find themselves new jobs soon.

Thanks to Eurogamer for the full details.

Categories: News