Rare veteran George Andreas leaves Microsoft for Sony

now Creative Director of SCEE

Rare veteran George Andreas has left Microsoft to join Sony.

Andreas, who played a key role in the development of the Kinect hardware, Kinect Sports 1 and Kinect Sports: Season 2 as well as Xbox 360 launch games Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero, joined Sony this month as creative director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, working out of SCEE's London office.

During his 16 years at Rare he worked on most of the legendary studio's games, including various Banjo titles, Viva Pinata and, going back to Rare's Nintendo years, Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye and Killer Instinct Gold.

Good or bad news? He got all that n64 goodness...but also kinect(lol)

LOL Sony focusing on Move 2 confirmed. They really need some Microsoft talent to make it work this time ;)RR360DD

Considering David Wise, Chris Seavor, and quite a few others left, I can't blame him.

[QUOTE="RR360DD"]LOL Sony focusing on Move 2 confirmed. They really need some Microsoft talent to make it work this time ;)clyde46

now Creative Director of SCEE

[quote=""]Rare veteran George Andreas has left Microsoft to join Sony.

Andreas, who played a key role in the development of the Kinect hardware, Kinect Sports 1 and Kinect Sports: Season 2 as well as Xbox 360 launch games Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero, joined Sony this month as creative director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, working out of SCEE's London office.

During his 16 years at Rare he worked on most of the legendary studio's games, including various Banjo titles, Viva Pinata and, going back to Rare's Nintendo years, Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye and Killer Instinct Gold.campzor

Good or bad news? He got all that n64 goodness...but also kinect(lol)

Strikes me as a sign that Sony are looking for more experience to become stable, rather than trying to do something innovative. Its a bit like managing a football team, do you bring in an older player who is 30ish years old you will more likely give you consistancy, or do you go with a bright talented player with huge promise. It depends on your situation but the outcome is still the same. The talent will either create something amazing and blow everyone away. Or the old experienced guy will just be there to help the rest of the guys out.

Rare is such a terrible company nowadays. I'm surprised he didn't leave sooner.Timstuff

considering the job market and the UK developement scene, and even the job market in general no one in their right mind would leave a job unless they were guaranteed one and in general any decent employment is hard to come by.

Microsoft lost like everyone that was around making the 360 from,Peter Moore,Robbie Bach,J Allard,they don't even have Cliffy B for Gears anymore ...lol

Well N64 was a long time ago, nothing good from rare since. Not quite the coup people think. Probably better for MS. :P

now Creative Director of SCEE

[quote=""]Rare veteran George Andreas has left Microsoft to join Sony.

Andreas, who played a key role in the development of the Kinect hardware, Kinect Sports 1 and Kinect Sports: Season 2 as well as Xbox 360 launch games Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero, joined Sony this month as creative director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, working out of SCEE's London office.

During his 16 years at Rare he worked on most of the legendary studio's games, including various Banjo titles, Viva Pinata and, going back to Rare's Nintendo years, Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye and Killer Instinct Gold.campzor

Good or bad news? He got all that n64 goodness...but also kinect(lol)

Wait... now cows are going to say that Kinect games, Kameo, and Pefect Dark Zero were awesome games? :roll:

HA HA HA!!!

Eh, from what I've read here on SW for many years now is that all the real talent left Rare years ago :o so I dunno, hmm, with that in mind and I always believe everything said on SW, this must mean Sony is really scraping the bottom of the barrel. :shock: :twisted:

Anyhoo, yeah, Move dev'ing and full steam ahead with the PS4 Movebox. :P

The domination continues. Lems' tears are made of jelly sauce.:cool:

I miss Ispeakfact. :(

Sony copying Kinect. Calling it.clyde46

They already have EyeToy.DontGetBigIdeas

Smart move. Now he actually gets to make games.

[QUOTE="Timstuff"]Rare is such a terrible company nowadays. I'm surprised he didn't leave sooner.razgriz_101

considering the job market and the UK developement scene, and even the job market in general no one in their right mind would leave a job unless they were guaranteed one and in general any decent employment is hard to come by.

i've heard of people "jumping ship", but not "jumping to a sinking ship", that just seems dumb.sts106mat

[QUOTE="sts106mat"]i've heard of people "jumping ship", but not "jumping to a sinking ship", that just seems dumb.APiranhaAteMyVa

The domination continues. Lems' tears are made of jelly sauce.:cool:

LordQuorthon

that sounds very inefficient and downright impractical.

Hopefully he's not going to work on a Next Gen Eye Toy as I would like to believe the reason for him leaving is to get back to developing games that aren't Kinect-styled. Many members of Rare has expressed frustration with their role with MS, so it would be natural for people in that position to want to go back to what they used to do (best), making games. Hopefully that's why he's leaving, but we'll see.

I always get annoyed when I see people bash Kinect. It is meant for women and children, bought by women and children, and loved by women and children.

Never understand why people are so offended by it, I assume it's a fear of losing their hobby to the populace.

I always get annoyed when I see people bash Kinect. It is meant for women and children, bought by women and children, and loved by women and children.

Never understand why people are so offended by it, I assume it's a fear of losing their hobby to the populace.

fadersdream

Good stuff.

[QUOTE="fadersdream"]

I always get annoyed when I see people bash Kinect. It is meant for women and children, bought by women and children, and loved by women and children.

Never understand why people are so offended by it, I assume it's a fear of losing their hobby to the populace.

1-UPking82

It was fun but it can tire you out when you play it for so long.

Great news, taking the suckage that is rare over to the largest conglomerate gathering of suckage, sony.

[QUOTE="fadersdream"]

I always get annoyed when I see people bash Kinect. It is meant for women and children, bought by women and children, and loved by women and children.

Never understand why people are so offended by it, I assume it's a fear of losing their hobby to the populace.

1-UPking82

[QUOTE="campzor"]

now Creative Director of SCEE

[quote=""]Rare veteran George Andreas has left Microsoft to join Sony.

Andreas, who played a key role in the development of the Kinect hardware, Kinect Sports 1 and Kinect Sports: Season 2 as well as Xbox 360 launch games Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero, joined Sony this month as creative director of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, working out of SCEE's London office.

During his 16 years at Rare he worked on most of the legendary studio's games, including various Banjo titles, Viva Pinata and, going back to Rare's Nintendo years, Donkey Kong 64, GoldenEye and Killer Instinct Gold.o0squishy0o

Good or bad news? He got all that n64 goodness...but also kinect(lol)

Strikes me as a sign that Sony are looking for more experience to become stable, rather than trying to do something innovative. Its a bit like managing a football team, do you bring in an older player who is 30ish years old you will more likely give you consistancy, or do you go with a bright talented player with huge promise. It depends on your situation but the outcome is still the same. The talent will either create something amazing and blow everyone away. Or the old experienced guy will just be there to help the rest of the guys out.

Kind of silly to judge him on "results" when for all we know he was instructed by MS executives to make Kinect games. It's not like the guy had free reign of a studio to make whatever games he wanted. He was a MS employee.

There is really no way to know for sure why he stayed on as other RARE long-timers left. Does he have a family? Maybe he didn't want to uproot his family, so chose to stay on as a "company man" for a few extra years and make the games the MS exectuves wanted to see for Kinect. So why is he leaving now? Do we know? Maybe he got more money. Or maybe he was just tired of working on Kinect games and wanted to make something he could be passionate about. Maybe now he gets more power to do games that are his vision? There's really no way to know.

Basically, because we don't know, it's stupid to speculate about employees moving from one studio to another - especially when it's not a "bombshell" like if Kojima signed on with EA or something like that. This sure as f$@% doesnt' mean he's going to be working on Move games. Of course it doesn't mean he's going to make some new classic either (i.e. because of his affiliation with Rare's N64 games). Basically we know nothing.

Probably left because MS would not let them make a proper Banjo Game.

Perhaps I would go for bad news for SONY fans, and nothing special for MS fans.

I mean, why would they need him other than for casualizing something?

[QUOTE="clyde46"][QUOTE="RR360DD"]LOL Sony focusing on Move 2 confirmed. They really need some Microsoft talent to make it work this time ;)RR360DD

Probably left because MS would not let them make a proper Banjo Game.

Mrmedia01

[QUOTE="Mrmedia01"]

Probably left because MS would not let them make a proper Banjo Game.

percech

[QUOTE="percech"][QUOTE="Mrmedia01"]

Probably left because MS would not let them make a proper Banjo Game.

fernandmondego_

[QUOTE="fernandmondego_"][QUOTE="percech"] Yeah because MS made them make Nuts&Bolts even though they always wanted to make it since the N64 days. Idiot.percech

[QUOTE="percech"][QUOTE="fernandmondego_"] Microsoft seemed to give them a lot of freedom but they were not very focused.fernandmondego_

[QUOTE="fernandmondego_"]

[QUOTE="percech"] MS backed them up 100% but they weren't producing classics like they were for N64. I enjoyed Kameo, Nuts&Bolts, and Viva Pinata btw...but they obviously didn't make the impact they did for Nintendo.percech