>>723322174
>Game development really bloated in cost and scope by then.
This.
I don't think anything was wrong with the studio, but they did not do well trying to expand their team to meet the increase in game scope demand.
Rare seemed like a relatively small 40ish person studio that all knew each other and would get along (if those conker's bad fur day commentary videos were correct). Leading to a very natural and well done process of trying new things out, communicating well, and healthy fun competition between teams. Probably had a lot of fun working with each other.
And that works well when games were relatively simple compared to todays standards.
But as games got more complicated they likely had to expand their team to multiple hundreds to maybe even thousands and you just can't have the kind of working environment with huge teams.
So that Rareware souls just died under a pile of bureaucracy and bloat.
