Banjo-Kazooie Spiritual Successor Planned by Former Rare Team

A group of former Rare developers have formed a new indie studio and declared their debut project will be a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie.

Playtonic Games was recently formed by former members of Rare Ltd. and has officially announced its debut project, VG247 reports. This project is going to be a spiritual successor to Banjo-Kazooie. The rights to the Banjo-Kazooie license are still owned by Microsoft, who acquired the rights to Rare and its properties in 2002. Rare's founders, Tim and Chris Stamper, left the company in 2007 and recently created a mobile gaming studio, FortuneFish. Other former members of Rare, such as Chris Sutherland, Gavin Price, Steve Mayles, Jens Restemeir, Steven Hurst and Mark Stevenson, had years of experience at Rare and are the core members of Playtonic Games. While we can't wait to see what the experienced team at Playtonic Games will unleash, we can't help but wonder what will happen to our favorite Rare IPs, which are now under Microsoft Studios' ownership.

Last month, Microsoft Studios' Creative Director Ken Lobb said the following:

Will there ever be another Banjo, Viva, Blast Corps, Battletoads? Yeah, someday,

We know there’s value. We have a lot of passion internally for each of the games. And we have surprises in store for the near and long future.

Understand that what it’s really about is we want to build this suite of IP that we can add to a list of, ‘let’s build some new things, let’s build some recent sequels, and let’s do some crazy stuff like dig back into our portfolio of IP and build some games that people love.’

I think the best message to give to your listeners is we love the old IP as much as you do. Please be patient because we can only build so much at a time.

We're got our fingers crossed, Mr. Lobb. Until then, we can't wait to see how Playtonic Games pays homage to the unforgettable bear and bird duo. For now, you can check out the developer's website, and wonder what kind of characters the teaser image below hints at.