Latest industry gossip suggests that Microsoft have already purchased Rare... Official announcement expected in two weeks.

Legendary developers Rare have again been rumoured to have been bought by Microsoft - with sources suggesting that a deal worth between £250m and £350m has in fact already gone through.

An official announcement confirming the buy-out is expected to be made by Microsoft at their X02 press event, which takes place in Seville on 24-25 September.

Rumours regarding Rare's future date back to Christmas, when it was thought they may be going multi-format. Since then, Activision apparently looked at purchasing the company but the price tag proved too steep.

The cost is clearly not a problem for Microsoft though - who currently have around $38.65 billion in cash (more than most banks) - and it appears as if they have finally forged a deal with the famed Brit coding house.

Rare has, until now, been inextricably linked with Nintendo, having developed such classic titles as Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Banjo Kazooie and Jet Force Gemini. They are currently working on Starfox Adventures for Gamecube although the good news is that the development of this is expected to continue despite the Microsoft deal.

It's still unclear, though, as to the status of the rest of Rare's Cube games. Perfect Dark 2 has long been rumoured to be Xbox-only although the company's GBA titles may be unaffected as Microsoft have already hinted that they would be interested in co-developing for GBA.

While Nintendo owned 49% of Rare, it seems as if they have sold this stake to Microsoft as part of the deal. Although this initially sounds improbable, it's worth noting that with big-name developers such as Square, Sega, Capcom and Namco now all developing games for the Cube, Rare's importance to Ninty has been significantly reduced. It looks as if the promise of hard cash from Microsoft - which would have netted them between £125m and £175 - was too good an offer to refuse.

The deal would come at a crucial time for Xbox, which is still struggling to establish itself as a 'must have' console. With Halo still the only 'killer app' for the machine, the addition of Rare to the line-up of Xbox developers would be a genuine coup.

A spokesperson for Microsoft was unavailable for comment at the time of writing. Rest assured though, we'll bring you more on this huge story just as soon as we have it.

Thanks to Games Radar for the gossip.

Date: 2002-09-10

Posted by: Dan

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