Date: March 10th, 2026 8:34 AM
Author: cowgod
Nintendo recognized that a western game dev was only as good as its Nerds. The Stampers were ready to gtfo.
Rare was disproportionately good at developing for N64 bc that Console was hard to develop for but they had experience with SGI development dating to DKC plus whatever insider info they got from Nintendo. There’s no reason to expect them to be disproportionately good at “making the game work” after the N64 gen. So even if the Stampers stuck around, other devs would catch up and they wouldn’t be the best western devs evidently, see GTA3 etc
The failure of n64 with 3rd parties had so much more to it than cartridges btw. Imagine being like “you need secret Microcode to make Good Games for this system. We only want Bad Western Games. Gtfo Capcom/Konami”
From a western pov, losing Rare was where it as like ok this is a REALLY easy decision this console gen haha. This is why GameCube was like $75 after a year or 2.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5843865&forum_id=2\u0026hid=#49731387)