Last month, we heard how Rare's next big game Everwild had reportedly been rebooted, and found out the senior creative designer Gregg Mayles had taken over as project lead.
It follows on from the game's creative director Simon Woodroffe leaving Rare last October. It seems the game has now lost another team member, who has announced on Twitter at the start of this month that they're moving onto a team under Sumo Digital as a technical designer, after two years of work on Everwild.
A follow-up tweet reveals how Rare was their introduction to the video game industry, so we wouldn't read too much into this departure.
"Rare was my first step into the games industry and came at a time where I'd been through A LOT and I felt hopeless. I just worked my butt off and a miracle happened to a nobody - it saved me and I will be forever grateful. I will miss the people and the studio the most."
As you might recall, GamesBeat journalist and insider Jeff Grubb mentioned how the disruptions to Everwild could potentially result in the game slipping into "2024 and beyond" - so we might still be waiting a while for this project.
Rare's studio head Craig Duncan, also noted last July how the Everwild team was still playing around with gameplay ideas. If we hear anything else about the status of this upcoming release, we'll be sure to keep you in the loop.
When do you think Everwild will finally be released? Give us your predictions in the comments below.
Comments 27
2 trailers with in-engine footage but no gameplay is always a big warning sign in my mind. I appropriately had zero hype for this!
Strange one this game with Rare.
Not sure how big the Rare team is nowadays?
And the quality of the developers overall.
Not sure even if they are that capable like, they sure are not a Playground Games or Coalition that’s for sure.
It’s interesting about developers on all sides of the camp. How do you value a developer to yourself.
I look at like this.
On both sides of the camp roughly half the developers/studios make games or try to makes games that I’m not interested in playing.
Therefore those developers mean nothing to me and are a waste to me, only game wise, not personally as people.
Rare in point, when they worked with Nintendo they made B&K, donkey Kong 64, diddy Kong racing etc. They meant so much to me, now they make absolutely nothing I’m interested in.
So once they were something to me now nothing to me.
I know all sounds harsh, but that the reality of making the games people want and sales etc.
Harsh business.
I think this may end up being a cancelled project. Scalebound comes to mind.
@Chaudy Forgot about that game. It looked pretty cool to me when they announced it.
@Chaudy
If it ends up getting cancelled or is released and is poor then you have to question Microsoft and the management of their studios. 343 and Halo ring a bell, though hopefully all is corrected there.
See I bet some studios you can just leave to get on with it, playground games, coalition and they will be fine.
Others you need to micro manage and mentor and help develop etc.
I just wonder if Microsoft take a blanket approach and treat all their studios the same, like leave them to get on.
In theory that is wonderful but management of any business any personnel and different departments need different approaches, sometimes just due to the age and stage of the studio and it’s different staff.
By this point it'll be rare to see any new rare games at all...see what I did there? Don't worry, I know where the door is.
Can Microsoft manage these studios? I feel like all we get are CGI, in game cutscenes, canceled games, major delays, or mediocre offerings.
Why? It seems to happen more with Microsoft than other companies. Maybe it’s time to spend money on better management.
@Bdbrady I think everything will work out fine. They've got enough already well managed studios, maybe though they should step in to the ones struggling
Didn't Phil Spencer say he doesn't want to show games super early after the whole scalebound debacle. I think Xbox has a bad habit
@Dezzy yeah, double red flag when you have in-engine footage but the developer openly admits they don't know what the game is actually going to be.
@BearyBad
Thankfully, that seems to have changed since E3. Literally everything shown is being released in the next 12-18 months.
Unfortunately, Everwild seems to be a culprit of trying to build excitement for the brands future before the game is anywhere near close to being ready.
Rare is such a mess, they have never recovered from those years working on the Kinect
Man what the hell is going on with this game
@Doctorwhoooourgh not disagreeing with you, but genuinely curious on which studios you think are well managed?
I hope they beef up the mismanaged ones too.
It's beginning to look a lot like Crack-Down(3),
Everywhere you goooooooooo.....
@Bdbrady I'm thinking of the studios they've purchased like Bethesda, 343 (despite the delay), Playground studios, Inxile, etc. With MS record though even one studio flopping will look bad for all the others.
@Bdbrady also, well managed as in what I understand about the studio, I could be wrong there haha, I just see a game, a date, and a release and I immediately assume all is well
@Doctorwhoooourgh The studios under the Bethesda umbrella already have their own management. Playground and The Coalition are well managed, but given how poorly Microsoft has handled Rare ever since they bought them, it makes you wonder if it's not the studios themselves doing all of the management work and Microsoft has just gotten lucky because of that. 343 wasn't exactly well managed either, as Halo hasn't been close to the same since they took it over, but hopefully Infinite changes that and that they are finally on track.
I could be wrong. Maybe Rare and pre-Infinite 343 were isolated incidents and everything else will end up fine, but Microsoft needs to do something with Rare as it's clear they are lost and have been lost for a long time. Sea of Thieves has been good for them, but that's not been the norm with Rare.
@KilloWertz its always interesting how the narrative is Microsoft doesn't manage there studios well. When part of Microsoft's philopshu with studios is to be hands off. Like rare choose Kinect for the 360 generation https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-12-16-rare-kinect-rise-and-fall
But this isn't surprising with this person leaving and wants even a key member so this stuff happens alot.. so not sure what the news story is
@Terrin I agree about the actual news story. It's probably meaningless in the end, as it's just one person moving on to another better studio. Regardless, it does seem Microsoft needs to step in this time and do something since Rare has been a mess for a long time outside of Sea of Thieves.
Others were going on a tangent, so I commented on that as well.
@Bdbrady Microsoft have gotten super good at ANNOUNCING games. Their CG trailers are very good, but at some point they HAVE to actually release something great, or I'm not sticking around...
If only they stopped showing games too soon... But no, that's never going to happen.
Everwild for Microsoft is starting to be like The Last Guardian was for Sony. Microsoft should just push them to do a game in an established IP and then if all was well give them the freedom to do other new stuff.
Make it 2 player co-op action, rpg. Where you rescue the animals from whatever evil. It had the elements that everything is connected and build it from there. Sucks to hear this news but it can be saved.
The game should have never been shown if they had no clue what it was. Rare should remake old ips.
@Az1ner 💯🙆🏻👍🏼
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