Will DKC Ever Return to the VC?

[Leo_A]

I really doubt it.

You're best off limiting your dreaming to Nintendo tie-ins that Rare was contracted to develop for Nintendo and which seem to require some sort of cooperation with Rare in order to rerelease intact (The display of the Rareware logo in a title sequence, for instance). Rare either faces the choice to agree and make a few dollars off an old project that they developed that Nintendo wants to rerelease, or walk away with nothing.

But while it's not hard to imagine Rare working out a deal to make such a thing possible for a property that they not only don't own, but would never be allowed to appear on the Xbox One even if they did; It's an entirely different thing to hope for something like Perfect Dark or Banjo Kazooie to appear here.

It's quite clear that they're Rare owned. And since Rare is controlled by Microsoft and these noteworthy titles have a presence on Xbox systems, why would they ever cooperate to allow such classics to appear on the competition?

Again, MS only acquired the non-Nintendo-owned IPs but did not retain the workforce.

Microsoft bought the entire company, including all assets like the office buildings at Twycross and Rare IP from throughout the years. They never held copyrights for titles like Donkey Kong 64 since they merely were the contracted developer that Nintendo hired to handle the project, unlike a situation like Perfect Dark where it was a Rareware owned project that Nintendo held the publishing rights to.

They most certainly held on to their employees. A number that work there to this day have done so for decades. Microsoft didn't just buy some intellectual property and proceed to rid themselves of everything else.

No major corporate changes that I'm aware of even happened until five years ago, well into the Xbox era.