September 2^nd, 2002 (12:00am) - UK sources indicated today that the long-rumoured Microsoft take-over move on Rare may be imminent. Insiders have now set a price of £350 million for the developer, which at the moment is owned by Nintendo to the tune of 49 percent of its stock.
Rare refused to comment on the speculation today.

The news is looking likely to be a jigsaw piece that slots in nicely to make a final, Rare-shaped picture. Talk is heating up today regarding an apparently huge announcement at Microsoft’s X02 event in Seville later this month, which will be specifically software related. Rumour has been constant recently regarding the next Perfect Dark game heading exclusively to Xbox. See what we mean?

More. Chatter of the Stamper brothers, founders of the developer, looking to sell up has been circulating for more than a year. It’s now widely well known that Activision looked seriously at buying the outfit earlier this year, but British sources this morning hinted that Rare was simply too rich for the publisher’s blood.

Microsoft is said to have held a meeting recently with Rare in a hotel near Twycross, the developer’s base. Exactly the same talk emerged when Activision was looking over the company’s book.

Even more. Rare appears to have cancelled two projects recently, removing the links to the games from the company’s website. "It’s simply due to updating the site," said Rare by way of explanation last month. Still "updating" then, are you boys? Apparently so.

"There’s one guy running the website here," said a Rare employee today. "He’s got fairly minimal support, so he’s doing all of that at the same time as doing all the instruction books."

The games are still under development, the source added. Current speculation suggests the titles are being doctored to remove Donkey Kong, a Nintendo property, from the games.

Obviously, there’s more. When questioned on the state of Nintendo’s relationship with Rare at E3 this year, Nintendo heavyweights would only say that the only Rare game being shown for GameCube was Starfox Adventures: Dinosaur planet because that was the only title coming out in this financial year. Then they said refused to say anything else. We suggest you look carefully at the huge gaps between these lines.

While Microsoft remained unavailable for comment today, don’t expect this to go away. As soon as we hear more, we’ll let you know.