By Jake Doolin
Following a less than stellar release of their latest Kinect Sports game, Rare has announced it was letting go of up to 16 employees. Most of the blame for these layoffs comes from last month's release of Kinect Sports: Rivals which was originally slated to be an Xbox One launch title.
Besides low sales figures the game was met with average reviews that pegged the game as nothing special. But perhaps the biggest blow to Rare was Microsofts announcement last week that a new Kinect-less Xbox One would be shipping soon. A Microsoft spokesperson has given a statement about the layoffs say that,
"At Xbox, our goal is to constantly create new fun, social and interactive entertainment experiences. As part of Rare's commitment to this goal, we have made a decision to change our development process and methodology at Rare to best support our future projects, this has led to us reviewing the skills and the makeup of our development teams in our business."Rare continues to invest in our people and future projects."
While certainly a blow to the developer, Rare does still have projects in the works. Just this March Rare's studio head, Craig Duncan, stated that several unannounced projects were being worked on by the studio.
Source: Eurogamer
Image: Joystiq
