Rare restructuring its “current approach,” might involve layoffs

With the current world economic issues affecting the game industry, Microsoft has now begun to clean its own house by trimming some of the supposed fat from its developer portfolio.

Microsoft has already shut down several of its first-party studios including FASA, ACES and Ensemble and now it appears Rare is restructuring.

In a statement released to GameSpot, Rare’s Studio Manager Mark Betteridge said the restructuring could result in layoffs:

“As the entire industry struggles to address the increasing scale and cost of development, we too have felt a need to restructure our current approach so we can speed development and better manage the scale required to create high quality games.”

Betteridge’s comments, however, did specify on how Rare’s restructuring plan will affect its 200+ employees or the games currently in production.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when video games were still considered toys for kids with nowhere near the levels of respect the industry enjoys today, Rare was one of the titans of the video game industry.

Developer of such classic titles as Donkey Kong, Goldeneye 007, Perfect Dark and Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Rare was a developer that the industry could always rely on to create stellar titles that helped reshape the game industry that we know and love today, which is why in 2002, Microsoft acquired Rare for a then record $375 million.

The partnership was meant to make the Xbox a real force to be reckoned with, as Rare would develop games exclusively for the Xbox. Jump ahead to 2009 and that partnership has never really lived up to the original aspirations that Microsoft, or gamers were banking on.

While Rare would finally begin to release a number of games in succession on the Xbox 360, after only a handful of games produced on the original Xbox, those 360 titles have not amounted to a lot of sales. Most of all when compared to Microsoft’s other big developers such as Epic or Bungie.

Has Rare finally seen the light? One can only hope so as I believe, like many gamers out there that the studio certainly has the ability and talent to again recapture some of the magic that made them so great to begin with.

With reported four unnamed games in the works, hopefully these games, if they aren’t affected by this restructuring phase, can stand proudly with other Xbox-exclusives titles including Halo and Gear of War.

Read [GameSpot]