As with many major studios, Microsoft is sitting on a lot of older IPs. Some of those aren’t particularly noteworthy, one-off titles or failed franchises that didn’t quite lift off. But in some cases companies sit on beloved IPs that many would like to see come back. Microsoft’s big treasure chest, so to speak, is their collection of Rare franchises that were defining in their respective generations with the likes of Perfect Dark, for example. Could they come back? Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty says they always could, but it needs to be the right team.
In an interview with Game Informer that you can see below, Booty said the company was well aware of the classic IPs they’re sitting on. He said that he even has a list of them besides studios they hope to work with. Booty thinks classic revivals are always on the table, but said it would take a combination of passion for the franchise in question and the right developer, using the recent Battetoads remake as an example of how it all has to come together.
“The way Battletoads came about was, some of the people who are involved in working on it approached Craig Duncan [Rare studio head] and said, ‘hey, we remember growing up on this game and would love to put our own twist on the IP’,” he explained.
“Craig and I had a conversation and we loved their [developer Dlala Studios] energy… That’s the kind of thing I love. It’s been a few years now but I was fortunate enough to work with the team who rebooted Killer Instinct. That really came about because there was an energy and a passion for it.
“Those are the scenarios that I love and I think that those tend to work out a little better than trawling through a spreadsheet going, ‘ah, nobody’s done this in a while, maybe we could reboot that one’.”
The likes of Killer Instinct and Battletoads have found their way back, so hopefully in the future we’ll see more old school series come back to life. From Rare’s old catalog alone, we could see a lot of great material.