[Xantar]

Originally posted by BigJustinW

the sad part is, were probably just debating about a false rumor

That's really all I'm saying. Ok, I also said that Rareware wouldn't really gain anything out of being bought out by Activision. If Rareware were the size of Retro Studios or perhaps Silicon Knights, I might agree with you. But the fact is they are not. They are so big that they are capable of publishing some of their own games. They have, in fact, already done so on a few N64 games. Having all their games published by someone else would be a step backwards.

You are making all these claims that Rareware could make so much more money if they went third party, but you don't have a shred of evidence to back yourself up. And the real fact of the matter is neither you nor I knows how much money Rareware could make as a third party. There are all kinds of added expenses for that (not the least of which would be having to pay licensing fees to console manufacturers). And we have no idea how well their games would sell, especially since we don't know how well Rareware would be able to pump out the multiple games per year that a third party is required to make in order to survive.

So, if Activision did in fact buy them, they probably spent a lot less than what Rare wanted Nintendo or Microsoft to pay.

(plus, if Nintendo got second party titles from them with or without a buy, what would be the point of purchasing them?)

You don't know that Rareware would cost less to Activision than to Nintendo or Microsoft. Besides, I don't think Rareware would make themselves 20 times cheaper for Activision, and that is the difference between the amount of cash Activision has and the amount of cash Nintendo has.

If Rareware were making games for other platforms, they wouldn't be giving second party titles to Nintendo any longer. The relationship would be broken off. Rareware may make exclusive third party games as Capcom and Factor 5 do, but Nintendo would not defray publishing and most development costs. Besides that, there is most certainly a point to keeping ownership of Rareware: to keep their games off of other platforms. That's a pretty valuable commodity.