by Paul on Jul 20th, 2012

SaikyoBro, one of our forum members, was the first to bring this to our attention but he was soon joined by a cacophony of internet noise as news began to spread. Of course, this all needs to be taken with nice and generous pinch of salt as it remains firmly in the rumour mill for now, but the word is that Nintendo are considering buying back Rare from Microsoft. The reason for it is that Nintendo wants to get its hands back on the Banjo-Kazooie IP with a view to bringing it to their consoles.

Personally, I’m firmly in the “not gonna happen” camp, but it did get the old cogs in my mind whirring. What I do think is that there may be more to this than just rumour, but not in the way we’re expecting. Let me elaborate …

Here at Rare Gamer we’ve long held the belief that should the powers that be at Microsoft and Nintendo feel there was enough money in it, in theory there was nothing to stop Rare making games for the 3DS. The logic is that because Microsoft are not in the handheld business, Rare making a game for Nintendo’s handheld was possible as it generated cash for all parties and helped to spread awareness of the IP on the Xbox 360 (i.e. making a Banjo-Kazooie game for 3DS makes all those buying it feel more inclined to get B-K: Nuts & Bolts on Xbox 360) and I think that this is where the rumour stems from.

Maybe one of the parties involved is looking into the possibility of a Rare handheld game seeing the light of day on 3DS and word has leaked, but the old wishful thinking and chinese whispers have kicked in, turning it into “Nintendo are going to buy Rare”? What we do know is that Rare have been working on many prototypes for games over the last few years, 99% of which have not gone anywhere as making a full title out of them for Kinect was deemed a non-starter. However, just because Microsoft and Rare have both gone on record to state that they are a Kinect-only studio on the 360, it doesn’t stop them from seeing if those ideas could translate well into a portable variant.

So, maybe we have the tantalising prospect of it being an all-new game for the 3DS, as opposed to a B-K game, whether it be brand new, a remake or a port. Either way, if this has any grounding in fact at all then you can consider us to be very excited. While we’re doing our best not to get our hopes up, the mere thought that Rare might be appearing on 3DS is too exciting to discount completely.

Categories: News