Rare Is Completely Re-Evaluating Its Development Process After Everwild Cancellation

So in other words, Activision, and it's methods of development, are slowly taking over Xbox, but instead of this being a case of all-hands-on-deck to make the next Call of Duty, it is another Live Service Game in the form of Sea of Thieves.

Is this the future for Xbox where only Live Service content is safe from the chop...?

@Fiendish-Beaver No, it doesn't mean anything like that

It just mean that Everwild was in dev hell. Which is obvious since it was in some form of development for decade. So Microsoft axed it...

When I was growing up Rare was my absolute favourite Developer. It was just hit after hit in a huge range of genres. GoldenEye, Banjo, Diddy Kong Racing, Jet Force Gemini and so many more. It's heartbreaking to see what they have been reduced to now.

Microsoft has truly taken a once mighty developer and gutted it. After 20+ years post-Nintendo divorce, Sea of Thieves is really the only stand out for me and I’m not even a fan of games like that.

It would be so easy to (faithfully) remake the Banjo-Kazooie games and Viva Piñata, some of the best masterpieces they own.

I said this years ago. Way back when the megalodon made an appearance. They should have built content into the world (such as a meg skull on an island - signifying it came to the world and was bested). They started with an empty world and built on it, rather than on the lore that twin-tracks the player's journey.

@Scribedby Faithful remakes, of course! No change of script nor censorship.

Will Rare ever do anything other than Sea of Thieves or are they doomed to eternally work on live services for all eternity?

Axing Everwild was probably a good idea in 2025, but one can’t help consider what other options there were since it’s development began.
Reading some interviews with (former?) Rare employees it seems a design ethos that informed Everwild and Sea of Thieves were that they wanted to make games that were always left field unique experiences. That sort of development can work - Kojima and Death Stranding comes to mind. It also is something devs need to have the juice for, and it really seems like modern Rare doesn’t?

I know they turned around SoT, but would it be the worst thing if some project management stepped in to say “let’s do a normal game this time lads!”

Have they released new freaking guns or is it that same 4 guns since 2017?

My concern is that Sea of Thieves just went from a big fish in a small pond to a medium fish in an ocean. Will Microsoft-Activision look at it after a few years and be unsatisfied if they compare it to CoD?

This used to be an awesome game, but the amount of messing around with the game, especially combat, has made it extremely painful to play nowadays. Worst update I saw recently was the blunderbuss getting nerfed for all the wrong reasons. The gun is useless now. Should have been left alone. I don’t trust these guys to make any right decision and as the money continues to pile in from the Activision purchase, I feel Rare are cooked.

I loved Sea of Thieves in it's early years, but it really didn't feel like it's done anything noteworthy recently. I really enjoyed the Tall Tales element of the game, especially the original 9 missions focused on Golden Shores. I would love to see another expansive campaign like that one added that isn't just some community event or server-wide spawn like the Burning Blade and Skeleton Forts. Give me more of that awesome lore and epic soundtrack.

I would take this as a, uh duh, and a well this is what they have done to themselves. They needed to manage it better, but better leaders if it was them not the staff having a 'can do this better and better and better' mentality.

Just release it and take time to add updates. Or just release it, add updates and make the next game. But nope. They take too long, and waste time, money and meetings/work achieving nothing.

Current Rare aren't an experimental studio (very few can be anymore, surprised Double Fine even are still alive, Travelers Tales had Lego and dropped their unique games entirely, no idea what they are up to now, other examples can apply) like the past staff were, but even still. Can they even do a regular game anymore? Are they too live service deep or modern game design deep at this point?

Even Hytale they went eh lets do this, but it was also Riot or the C#/C++ engine team, that just made it take longer. They should have just released it in Java, made the add on elements over time and been fine but nope. What a waste. Even Minecraft was smart enough even if annoying to go Java, other platforms, legacy console, rework to Bedrock so less time wasted on each console unique version but try to add parity and instead they went eh Bedrock parity, not Java parity but good enough.

My hopes of ever getting another Viva Pinata game are up in smoked after this.

@EvilBear @Ooccoo_Jr it is sad, they were untouchable in the n64 days weren’t they… it felt like they just pumped banger after banger out every year.

Is a shame they’ve not been the same under Microsoft’s leadership.

They're gonna be stuck making Sea of Thieves, forever.