There’s an interesting rumor that’s come up in light of the recent sad news about the large scale layoffs and cancellations that’s occurred in Microsoft.
Among last week’s rumors were that Rare’s action-adventure games Everwild was cancelled. As it turned out, Rare’s longest serving employee, veteran game developer Gregg Mayles, was added as Everwild’s creative director all the way back in 2021. Following this cancellation, Mayles had allegedly left the company.
Andy Robinson was part of the latest episode of the Video Games Chronicle’s VGC: The Video Game Podcast. In this episode, he revealed the surprise revelation that Microsoft has actually been taking in new pitches for what to do with Banjo-Kazooie.
Andy Robinson said this:
The talk for ages was that there’s always outside interest in Banjo, but they’re not interested, right? I mean, Greg is someone who doesn’t look back notoriously. He said this on the record, he likes to do new stuff. The attitude from the studio leadership was always, “No, no, no no. We’re going to do the new thing.”
I heard more recently the pitches are being listened to. I heard constantly the name that comes up is Toys for Bob, who really want to do one. Funny enough, I heard Moon Studios as well as another one who was really interested.
There’s always talk about interest of a cartoon or a movie.
We have known for a while that both Toys for Bob and Moon Studios are interested in making new Banjo-Kazooie video games, though it isn’t clear how often and how recently they have been pitching games to Microsoft. One certainly wonders who that third company pitching new games could possibly be. Truth be told, it’s likely that the ‘cancelled’ Banjo-Kazooie video game was another pitch that got farther than others, but didn’t go forward.
On the flip side, one could certainly see an animation studio interested in making a Banjo-Kazooie movie or show. Video games are a somewhat hot, if untested, commodity for Hollywood right now, with the Sonic the Hedgehog and MineCraft movies showing that there’s money in doing them in live action, as well as in the Super Mario Bros. Movie making more conventional animated features. They don’t even have to be good, as MineCraft shows, though the Borderlands movie is a lesson that success is not guaranteed.
It’s simultaneously frustrating and aggravating that Microsoft has no interest in using Banjo-Kazooie, but this certainly speaks to the dilemma of a company that has too many IP. Hasbro held onto a warchest of IP just so they wouldn’t compete with the likes of GI Joe and Transformers, only to now license them to their peers. Given Microsoft’s recent moves, it isn’t clear what future both game developers and the games themselves can have under them.
