Former Banjo-Kazooie Team Hints at Possible Collaboration with Rare

In an interview with The Guardian, Playtonic director and 20-year Rare veteran Gavin Price said that he knows what Rare is developing now and that his company may want to "collaborate" with his former coworkers down the line.

Price founded Playtonic after he was laid off from Rare and Microsoft last year. Since then, Price has said that his new company will be working on a "spiritual successor" to the Banjo-Kazooie games called Project Ukulele. For its part, Rare has been rumored to be handling "ambitious" new projects.

"I still chat to them. I know what they were working on when I left last year," he said. "It sounds really good… You never know, there are some good old mates of ours down the road, they may might want to do a little multi-studio collaboration."

Price also dispelled a common rumor that when Rare joined Microsoft, the tech giant quashed creativity in the studio. Price says that wasn't the case at all.

"For me, it was more about [Rare founders] Tim and Chris Stamper leaving," Price said. "There was no sense of progression about what the company was going to do from that point on. The story people want to hear is that Microsoft came in and destroyed everything. It wasn't like that. They gave us freedom, almost more freedom than Nintendo gave us."

Playtonic will be looking to fund their next game via Kickstarter starting sometime in May.