10 More Great Video Games Nobody Bought
3. Viva Piñata
The story of Microsoft’s acquisition of Rare is a muddy one. Once Nintendo’s most prized allies, the team found themselves churning out stinkers like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and arbitrary Kinect games for a long time.
However, in their early days of Xbox exclusives, Rare put out a new IP which is their slept-on masterpiece.
Like Jade Empire, Viva Piñata was a victim of the audience that it was put in front of. Xbox owners were eating good on gritty shooters like Gears of War and realistic RPGs like Oblivion. Rare’s colourful, unique gardening sim, by comparison, was so cutesy it had a tie-in animated children’s show.
That belies the game’s tougher, strategic edge as you juggle attracting certain Piñatas and rescuing your garden’s inhabitants from the nefarious Professor Pester. Both Viva Piñata and it's sequel were dripping with the kind of charm that only Rare could instil and offered much greater depth than they first appeared, making them highly addictive.
Although the games made full use of the power of the Xbox 360 and couldn’t have worked nearly as well on Nintendo hardware, it’s highly likely that with access to that audience they would’ve sold a lot more than they did. We can only hope that one day we can hit the Piñata of the Nintendo Direct and have a Switch port of Viva Piñata come tumbling out.