In 2002, Microsoft paid $375 million to buy developer Rare the makers of the insanely popular N64 hits GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, and Banjo-Kazooie to name a few. The acquisition was a major blow to Nintendo at the time, and many analysts believed the move to be a very smart move for Microsoft.

 Now six years and $375 million later Rare has still failed to produce results. In the three years that Rare has been developing games for the Xbox 360 Rare has only managed to generated just over $66 million combined domestically over those three years, according to the NPD Group.

 Unpleased with these results Microsoft has announced plans to begin restructuring Rare in order to make the developer more profitable. Rare apparently likes the idea. Rare studio manager Mark Betteridge told Gamespot.com  "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," explained Betteridge.

 Even with the restructuring that will be taking place does the problem go deeper for Rare. After all Rare really hasn't done much ever since the N64 days. Has Rare gone creatively bust?