An ex-Microsoft employee (verified to be so) has posted on Reddit, claiming that Insomniac, who recently released Sunset Overdrive with Microsoft for the Xbox One last year, originally wanted to try and reboot Rare’s classic Conker franchise, but that did not work out.
Apparently, Microsoft has been looking to capitalize on Rare’s stash of dormant IPs for a while now (and about time too), and the one they considered rebooting first was Conker. The studio they decided on to reboot the franchise was Insomniac, who had already worked on hit platformers before, and who was already working with Microsoft; however, Microsoft wanted the game out by the end of 2015, and Insomniac, wary of the shorter development cycle, declined.
This was not all the dirt that he dug up, though. For fans of Rare’s classic franchises, there may be some good news here- it appears Microsoft is looking at rebooting Banjo Kazooie and Perfect Dark in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
You can check out the whole post on Reddit here for yourself, and see specifically what he said for yourself (he also shared what he alleges is an e-mail chain verifying all this). Now, the user does have a verified account (meaning he is not lying about his position within Microsoft), but as to how much of what he says you want to believe, especially given how soon plans change in this industry, is up to you.
Personally? If Microsoft would just capitalize on Rare’s IPs, I think they would go from having the weakest catalog of first party IPs in the industry to one of the strongest ones. So I hope they do it. Especially since I want to play those games.