Rare: We wouldn’t be better off making a FPS

A new first-person shooter from Rare is not what the industry or Xbox One needs right now, Kinect Sports Rivals executive producer Danny Isaac has told Develop.

The Leicestershire studio has been working on titles for Microsoft’s Kinect sensor since the unveiling of the device in 2009. But there are those that would prefer if the studio returned its core games heritage.

“Would we be better off if Rare was building an FPS? I don’t think so,” Isaac toldDevelop.

Isaac said that the studio’s first Xbox One game, Kinect Sports Rivals, offers an experience that “you can’t really get outside of going to the old-school arcades”.

“As an industry we need to be innovative. We need to have aspirational views of what we build, and be building experiences that you can’t have elsewhere,” he said of the entertainment landscape, which has never been more competitive as mobile games, TV and social media all vie for consumers’ time.

Instead of making an FPS that would “only move the needle slightly”, he feels the studio is innovating within the confines of the Kinect Sports franchise, with features such as Champion Scanning where the Kinect sensor creates a stylised digital likeness of you in minutes.

“I think Kinect Sports Rivals is really one of the best pieces of software to show off the box all-up. The services, the Kinect sensor and, of course, Champion Scan. You just don’t get anything like that elsewhere,” he said.

Isaac added that consumers expect to be able to “keep engaging in [a franchise they love] over longer periods of time. We’ve seen that with the mobile and PC space. People expect their experiences to change and evolve”.

And with Rare’s ambition for KSR to be a game-as-a-service, he pointed out that “as developers, everything we build has be somewhat open-ended”.

Read more comments from Isaac in Develop’s feature about Rare and its vision for Kinect Sports Rivals.