c|net is reporting that Tim and Chris Stamper have left Rare, the company they founded twenty years ago.

The Stamper brothers have been responsible for many gaming greats, both through Rare and prior to that Ultimate Play The Game. Their roll-call of titles include; Atic Atac, Cookie, Jetpac, Lunar Jetman, Pssst, Knight Lore, Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde, Alien 8, Donkey Kong Country, Blast Corps, GoldenEye, Banjo-Kazooie, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, StarFox Adventures, Kameo, and Viva Pinata.

A Microsoft statement says that the brothers have decided to leave Rare 'to pursue other opportunities'.

They probably didn't like getting consumed by Microsoft, and I'm willing to bet are going to form another company.

This isn't a surprise, sadly. The last 6 years' worth of rare titles have been universally terrible.

Or maybe they are going to take all their MS dollars and buy a yatch to sail around the world. We have no idea what their agreements were but I assume they had to deliver X number of games or stay for so long. They hit that mark and off to the next thing.

it's always seems silly to buy developers that do not own IP. People can leave ... or just plain not work as hard. What are you really buying? However EA, Microsoft, Activision do it all the time ... so what do I know?

They're buying the rights and the assets more than anything, and then try to cash in on it by continuing to release titles that bear the company or franchise name regardless of how good or bad the subsequent releases are.

In any case, I notice that many companies bought out in this fashion tend to produce less viable games over time. By comparison, I'm seeing quality products come out of Indie developers. By example, check the Blitz Basic website and look at some of those games offered by teenagers or single man teams. That stuff rivals some high production games that are being released as of late. That kind of tells me that for the most part smaller gaming companies have become purely a financial investment, and usually when one big company buys a smaller one they have no ability or desire to produce quality products, and intend rather to strip mine the stellar past of the independent company in question.

Nintendo bought Rare before Microsoft, and Nintendo seemed to respect Rare more than MS. Nintendo let them keep their IPs like Banjo, Conker, and Perfect Dark. Nintendo also allowed Rare to move Kameo and Ghoulies to Xbox consoles. Microsoft will probably gut the company and steal all of Rare's IPs like they do with everything else.

Star Fox Adventures (2002) was OK! But after that... (Diddy Kong Racing DS maybe?)

See, this is the kind of thing that drives me mad. Sabre Wulf was bloody genius. Grabbed by the Ghoulies was nice in short burts and a huge throwback to old games like Double Dragon and Battletoads that people keep complaining about not seeing any titles like these anymore. And then cover any games that Rare put in a blanket "Oh it's complete shit because it's by Rare, the sellouts" statement. Viva Piñata has been one of the best games Rare's put out in quite a while, and aside from the beautiful art direction, it's really pleasant and fun to play. And not to mention the upcoming DKR DS, which supports 1-8 players (single OR multi-cart), 1-6 players online, and has the original kickarse single player adventure in there too.

Sure, there have been some real stinkers (like the clusterf--k of direction disaster that was Star Fox Adventures, and the disappointingly average Banjo Pilot), but despite what has been said, a lot of these games get ignored or loathed simply because they're by Rare. What kind of stupid mentality is that? Don't you like fun or something?

This is such a terrible shame. They created a lot of my favorite games, and essentially kept the N64 alive for years. Banjo Kazooie, Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark are all on my top 10 list easily.

Wow, now I'm really sad. This really ruined my day.