I always liked Peter Moore, and I was sorry when he left Xbox for EA. He’s given a very good interview on his time at Sega and Microsoft. (He ran the Xbox game group at Microsoft before moving on to Electronic Arts.) Lots of insight into the Xbox part of the game industry.
Here he is talking about Rare:
...and you know, Microsoft, we'd had a tough time getting Rare back -
Perfect Dark Zero was a launch title and didn't do as well as Perfect Dark...
but we were trying all kinds of classic Rare stuff and unfortunately I think
the industry had passed Rare by - it's a strong statement but what they were
good at, new consumers didn't care about anymore, and it was tough because
they were trying very hard - Chris and Tim Stamper were still there - to try
and recreate the glory years of Rare, which is the reason Microsoft paid a lot
of money for them and I spent a lot of time getting on a train to Twycross to
meet them. Great people. But their skillsets were from a different time and a
different place and were not applicable in today's market.