Fans of Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Battletoads are receiving some good news today: Microsoft Studios Creative Director Ken Lobb believes Rare Ltd.’s fan favorite properties will be revitalized, eventually.
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“Will there ever be another Banjo, Viva, Blast Corps, Battletoads? Yeah, someday,” he said during an episode of the Inner Circle Podcast (via Gamespot). “We know there’s value. We have a lot of passion internally for each of the games. And we have surprises in store in the near and long future.”
Rare has been developing games since 1985, but really grew in popularity during the Nintendo 64 era, when a partnership with Nintendo had them developing classics like Goldeneye 007, it’s spiritual successor, Perfect Dark, and the completely different Banjo-Kazooie.
The company, and their intellectual properties, were purchased by Microsoft in 2002. The company developed multiple titles for the Xbox 360 launch, including Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo: Elements of Power, and several of their classic properties have shown up in the Xbox Live Arcade or received new installments. However, in recent years, fans have begun to feel that the studio’s talents are being wasted on fringe titles like Kinect Sports.
Lobb says the revitalization of classic Rare franchises is something the comes up at Microsoft every so often.
“Understand that what it’s really about is we want to build this suite of IP that we can add to a list of, ‘let’s build some new things, let’s build some recent sequels, and let’s do some crazy stuff like dig back into our portfolio of IP and build some games that people love,’” he added. “I think the best message to give to your listeners is we love the old IP as much as you do. Please be patient because we can only build so much at a time.”
