Xbox 360 Central recently sparked a promising rumor, reporting that VGM Daily's Wednesday (4/12) podcast revealed "Microsoft [is] hoping to bring N64 title Goldeneye to XBLA." However, upon review, the interview with Xbox Live Marketplace team member Aaron Greenberg (featured in the podcast) casts a dark shadow on the possibility of Rare's classic reborn under the Xbox banner.
Here's our transcription (via Conrad Quilty-Harper):
VGM: It was recently made clear both by Rare and
Microsoft that all the Rare owned licenses are owned by you guys now. What's the likelihood of a game like Goldeneye
that was on the Nintendo 64 showing up on Xbox Live? 'Cause that game would do rather well ... ohhh, there's the smile!
'Wait for E3!'
Greenberg: No, the smile was just that you guys are asking very good questions. So,
here's the best way to answer that: I would say is that as far as I know we don't have plans to bring those
types of games on Xbox Live Arcade ... Some of the games that were ... on the N64, those games were pretty
large and are still gonna be pretty hard to distribute digitally depending on the title. I think even if you look at
what Nintendo's planning on doing in this space ... it's 8- and 16-bit games, it's not 32- and 64-bit games. So yeah,
we're excited to have Rare as a developer ... But we don't have a big strategy around bringing a bunch of those
games in particular [to the XBLA].
[Thanks, Master X 24]
(Page 1) Reader Comments
It belongs on the revolution!
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This guy apparently doesnt know that N64 games are going to be on Revolution... haha
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so 20-30mb is way too big for such a service, but 500mb demos arent?
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XBL Arcade is going to look pretty lame once the VC comes out.
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Let me get this straight, they dont want to distribute goldeneye, a game thats almost revered amongst FPS lovers ...... because "the game would be too large to distribute"
When everyone with half a brain knows that the N64 cart never was able to hold the data that a CD could (hence why the PS1 trumped the N64)
Cds currently run at about 6 or 700 MB, the N64 carts were about 32megs from what I read.
Lets say with some sligtly updated graphics, nothing fancy, nothing more than what they did with gauntlet or joust ...... xbox live playability .......hell, lets say the game was 400mb (thats talking crazy, I know, just go with me for a min)
Thats STILL nothing compared to the 500 to 900 meg demos they have up right now on xbox live. I believe the project gotham racing demo weighed in right at 1.something gigs.
And yet they now own rare ....
Seriously, THEY PAY THIS MAN? GIVE ME HIS JOB! I can be JUST as stupid I assure you! Does he even know what they have up on xbox live marketplace? what their sizes are? what the data capacity of a common game cartridge is?
TOO BIG?
yeah. 100 meg is too big for a broadband connection. *wank*
Moron.
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Besides, a 10 year old game such as Goldeneye would be a million times better than Rare's crappy excuse for new games. WhDoes anybody even like Perfect Dark Zero multiplayer anyway?
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Also the virtual console will have one of the turbografx cd-rom formats which was 200-300 megs and this was FMV cd-roms to boot.
It hasn't been mentioned if the vc can do dreamcast games, or even download gamecube games. Nintendo defintely knows how to do a wifi service unlike Mircosoft.
Goldeneye more likely has to due with the fact that Nintendo was the publisher. All those rare games were published by Nintendo. Rare was a second party so all the games are in limbo.
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That logic is flawed, if thats the case why would they be releasing street fighter?
The only thing nintendo has a hold over is their own IPs such as mario, donkey kong, samus, etc etc.
They have no claim to 3rd party games which leaves them open to MS wooing the developer for the distribution rights of that game.
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second of all, there are different requirements between XBLA games and demos to be put on the marketplace. this is an example of something called a business model. obviously, demos don't have any size requirements, and you see them get delayed because of some planning like bandwidth issues, compatibility testing, etc.
the same thing will happen to the nintendo VC and the playstation network.
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I doubt it'll happen, but one can dream, right?
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They're called periods. Use them.
even if you made any valid points, i have no idea. your entire post was just a huge run on sentence. maybe i'm dumb, but I have a real hard time following such things.
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If I'm not mistaken, Street Fighter made its original apperance in the arcade and from there ported to a plethora of consoles. So the memories a gamer gets from playing a Street Fighter game on XBLA could be varied and not from a specific Nintendo console.
And I never said Nintendo had any control over Rare IPs did I? I am saying when a person sits down to play Golden Eye (Which was exclusively for N64) on the XBLA, then more than likely they are going to have memories specifically of the N64 and of other N64 games they played and that in turn could possibly lead them to purchasing the Rev. for more N64 games.
Is that flawed logic? I think not.
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Anyway, yes, that is a surprisingly unintelligent reponse from the MS rep (although i'm starting to notice a trend - J Allard's criticism of the Revolution controller was "How am i going to watch DVDs with that?"). I can only imagine that either they genuinley do have plans of that nature and they're just doing a really poor job of covering it up with flimsy responses until they're ready to announce it, OR due to licence problems (EA not playing ball?) they can't so they're trying to brush it off as not a big deal.
Either way, i'm not really bothered. I still have my N64 and GE thankyouverymuch.
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And second or thrid party developer? Doesnt matter, they own rare and all the IPs plain and simple. There is no logical reason given during that interview why they cant release goldeneye on xbl.
http://xbox.ign.com/articles/371/371977p1.html
"The deal for Rare was a full acquisition INCLUDING ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and means Rare is more or less an internal development house for Microsoft Game Studios."
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No, they're called "Full stops". A period is when a lady decides to bleed from her vagina for no apparent reason
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Somebody needs to take a biology course.
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Not releasing a game originally on the N64 to keep people from buying the revolution for fear of leading their customers to want more N64 games is nothing more than conjecture.
Id like to see where there was a larger percentage of 1st party Nintendo titles released on N64 vs the number of 3rd party titles (that distribution rights can now be had for the right price)
Heres a hint, I doubt youll find it. But youre welcome to try.
Yes I know SF was out in arcades 1st, but I fail to see how that plays into their business strategy for NOT releasing goldeneye.
I didnt see this point of view brought up when a current gen version of Perfect Dark got released for 360 (oh noes! perfect dark cant be released on 360 cuz all the peoples will want to relive the original perfect dark on da nintenoes 64!)
With sligtly updated graphics, leaderboards, achievements and live online multiplayer it would offer something worthwhile people would pay money for.
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Period:
1 The full pause at the end of a spoken sentence.
2 A punctuation mark ( . ) indicating a full stop, placed at the end of declarative sentences and other statements thought to be complete, and after many abbreviations.
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The only thing that interests me here would be the single-player game - It would be fun to play through that again at some point... It was one of my all-time favorites. Innovative, and difficult. With bonus levels if you beat the game at the hard settings.
Maybe I'll dig my N64 out of storage this summer for that one...
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The largest N64 game was Resident Evil at 64 megabytes. Even with the addition of an online manual this shouldn't take more than half an hour to download on the worst connection that dares call itself broadband. Most of the really big N64 games were only half that size at 32MB (256 megabits), so I doubt the much earlier Goldeneye was any bigger than 16MB. By comparison, Geometry Wars is 14 MB according to a Team Xbox review.
Unless they felt Geometry Wars was pushing the limits on download size, there shouldn't be a problem with most N64 titles.
More likely, the guy just didn't want to get into all of the ugly complications that would be involved. First off, there is ownership of the Goldeneye IP. Rare may have a license in perpetuity for the N64 version but that probably doesn't cover any other versions. So it means striking a new deal with the IP owner, whose parent company might not be amenable to the idea.
Why do we need a new version? That brings us to the second complication. It is incredibly unlikely that Nintendo is going to grant a license to emulate the N64 for anyreasonable price. Rare's assigned team would have to create a N64-ish environment to run on the 360 to simplify porting their games that aren't entangled with Nintendo or anyone else's IP.
Then there is the matter of hosting a game most associated with a rival platform company rather than the neutrality of the arcades.
Microsoft almost certainly wants to get some value from Rare's old IP but finding the right way to do it is so simple.
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ok, that's just my ultra-paraphrase...
another thing: "look at what Nintendo's doing, no 32/64 bit on thiers..."
right... aparently you weren't there at E3 when they announced nes, snes, AND N64 games for download...
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Considering nostalgia is the in thing recently, that is definitely a risk. Also, Perfect Dark Zero is not a direct port, as Gold Eye would be.
Call me ignorant, but I'm not sure where you were going with this:
"Id like to see where there was a larger percentage of 1st party Nintendo titles released on N64 vs the number of 3rd party titles (that distribution rights can now be had for the right price)"
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P.S. you guys (not all of you) but most of you are still
fanboy/idiots/morons. But Thanks for the Grammar check
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Aren't most of the Xbox 360 downloadable demos anywhere from 400 to 800MBs?
I don't think 80MBs is gonna be a problem.
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Licensing issues are far more daunting. First there is the Bond License which is currently owned by EA from MGM. MS would have to release a port or recompile of Goldeneye for the 360, which would be considered a new bond game which would violate EA's license.
An emulated Goldeneye game would cause Nintendo to sue claiming that MS reverse engineered the N64 (which they would hae to do pull off such a feat).
I think the chances are much better of getting a ported Perfect Dark (originally for N64) on XBLA.
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They owned rights to create the game and market the game, but not the IP. If they own an IP they can do sequels, but that doesn't mean that they would necessarily have full rights to the original material.
In addition they may have an exclusivity piece to the console. Re-releasing a game that was an exclusive to a Nintendo-based console would likely require a new contract unless the original contract was time dated (such as the RE4 contract on the GCN). Time-dating contracts is pretty common, but I don't know if that is the case when signing something to be an exclusive title on a Nintendo system.
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The 360 game demos (Kong, PGR3, COD2) are NOT Arcade titles, and you can not download the entire game or purchase them in the online marketplace.
That said, I think MicroSoft should remove the under 80MB requirement if it means games like GoldenEye will never be available.
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Some popular Rare titles on the N64
GoldenEye 007
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Tooie
Perfect Dark
Jet Force Gemini
Blast Corps
Go to www.wikipedia.org and type in the name of one of these games. Find out the size of it, listed on the page. Then open up a new browser and go to Google. Type in, for example '64 Mb to MB'. This will give you the MB size of a game, or any file. Every MB is divided up into 8Mb. For example '64 Mb to MB' will give you 8 MB. My computer is having a problem getting to wikipedia for some reason. So you guys would have to do it instead, sorry.
All of these franchises, including Conker, belong to Rare and Microsoft EXCEPT for GoldenEye. EA now owns the James Bond license, including GoldenEye 007. The size of the game is not the issue, it's the rights to it.
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You all are forgetting that the Xbox Live arcade is for small games. It is seperate from the Marketplace for a reason: size of games. You can download a game from the Arcade and none of them have been over 64MB. The point of them releasing something on the ARCADE is for you to quickly download a game(trial or full) and play it and share the demo with your friends via the memory card. Arcade games are purposely given an "Access Point" outside the Marketplace so these can be kept seperate.
Nintendo hasn't given a number of how many games will be available and when and I seriously doubt you will see more than 5 N64 games on there (at lauch)due to the size of the game. Also, lets tone down some of the Nintendo childish fanboyism also. I was once a Nintendo-only fanboy but I never acted like some of you are.
(I understand that Arcade games are also accessible through the Marketplace but it is not like they have their very own category such as "Demos and Trailers".)
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Rare does not own the Bond IP. That belongs to MGM I believe.
Neither Nintendo or Microsoft/Rare owns the license to publish Bond games. That belongs to EA.
Unless some sort of agreement was made with EA it would be necessary to change the name of the game, and remove any plot points and characters that resemble the events and characters in the movie. i.e. ALL OF IT
And that is first and foremost, why we will likely not ever see a port of GoldenEye on either the Revo or the 360.
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