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"Rare is traditionally a very closely held company, a very secretive company. The founders, the Stamper Brothers, almost never gave interviews. They were very private individuals," said Harrison. "In fact, before Rare, they had a company called Ultimate, which made games for the 8-bit home computers that were popular in the the 1980s, like the Spectrum and the Commodore 64. I remember that their approach to journalists and reviewers was that if you want to review our game, well, you can go and buy it in the store. They had their own game publisher, that was very successful.

Then they started working for Nintendo, who were themselves a very secretive organization. And so I think that they became quite insular and quite inward-facing, and they missed some of the trends that were going on in the business generally. Now also, if you sell your company to Microsoft and get hundreds of millions of whatevers, currency in the bank, it does tend to defocus management a little bit. But Rare, and prior to Rare, Ultimate, are responsible for some of the best games ever made. And from an industry point of view, I hope they continue to make good games, because they're an inspiration to many of us in the business. I'm sure they'll get their groove back."

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