Even old Rare doesn't compare to Naughty Dog in terms brand recognition and popularity and definitely not even modern Rockstar which is on a whole different planet...
Weird comparison.
How is comparing old Rare to Naughty Dog weird in any way? Who else would you compare them to? You have to keep in mind the context of the time period we're talking about here.
Back when Rare was at its peak, there was no social media. No Facebook. No Twitter. No YouTube. Internet was very limited and not as widespread. Message boards
did exist, but again, limited number of people using them. Plus the gaming industry was much smaller and not as mainstream as it is now. Taking all this into account, Rare had as much recognition and popularity as they realistically could've had back then in that kind of limited environment as ND has in today's much more interconnected and advanced society.
Even if what you're saying is technically true (about ND having more recognition than Rare), there are reasons for this. First off, Rare was a notoriously secretive company back then and their designers never liked putting themselves in the spotlight much. Unlike how much we know and hear about Neil Druckmann and the like. Secondly, Rare's slow descent into irrelevance during their first 12 or so years with MS can't have helped. If they were still releasing games with the same level of quality and quantity as in the 90's, you can bet your ass they'd be as well known as ND today.
Ironically enough, Rare was a huge inspiration for ND's games back in the 90's. Crash was inspired by DKC, as one of the developers stated themselves. It was them attempting to bring DKC's gameplay into 3D. Diddy Kong Racing must've had some amount of influence on Crash Team Racing as evidenced by one of the test tracks for CTR being a replica of a DKR track during development. I also could swear that I've read somewhere that Jak & Daxter was influenced by Banjo Kazooie in some way, but I could be making that up.
I mean, we're talking about a developer that released games like DKC and Goldeneye. Fuck me if they weren't one of the most well known developers of the 90's and early 00's. There's a reason why MS even bothered to shell out that much cash to buy them and why their buyout was made out to be such a big deal. You could even say that Nintendo fans tended to "overrate" their games a bit in the exact same way that Sony fans "overrate" ND's games these days. Both studios were/are absolutely massive for their respective publishers and their console's player base.
Rockstar is obviously a different story. Not many studios could put out something as culturally massive as GTA. I'm not sure comparing a mid-sized studio like Rare to a huge studio like Rockstar is fair anyway.
I always have to laugh at people downplaying anything positive about Rare especially nowadays. Sea of Thieves I do not think is for me, but I love that they've found their own successful niche! It feels very much connected to their legacy stylistically too which is pretty wild.
The writing was on the wall with Rare's abilities in later titles like Donkey Kong 64 and especially Star Fox Adventures. The major exodus to Free Radical left a permanent talent void that so many people ignore for some reason. They were a fundamentally different company leaving 2000 already.
I absolutely agree that it's annoying when people downplay modern Rare any chance they get, but I also find it equally as annoying when people downplay Rare's late Nintendo era to prop up their MS era as you seem to be doing here. Not to mention stating misleading information.
There was no mass exodus of staff from Rare before the buyout. Unless you count 5 people as a "mass exodus". There were only like 4 or 5 people that left for Free Radical and 1 person left to form Zoonami. But I suppose going by N64 development standards, 4 or 5 people out of 10 or so could be seen as "massive", I guess. But even if that's the case, their FPS team was the only team that suffered any major casualties.
It doesn't make any sense for someone to claim that Rare started to suck under Nintendo and to then say that their output with MS has been great and underrated and misunderstood. It almost looks like an attempt to snipe at people who dismiss their MS output and prop up their Nintendo output, and considering how annoying the hate for Rare is, I guess I can't blame you, but it doesn't make what you're saying any less false or silly. I've noticed some others in this thread have said similar things.
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