removed some clutter here
Rare is owned by Microsoft, doesnt make them their bitch.
when you make nothing but kinect sports, what are you then
Let me repeat that, Rare is owned by MICROSOFT...
now lets look at my philosophical question
If i(nintendo) give you (rare) the rights to create a game using some character under my ownership, who owns the rights to distribute the game
if rare owns them then DKC would be on xbla
if nintendo owns them, why would they be taken down(and they would have had to replace the rare logo i believe...)
however if both must come into agreement to allow the game to be released on VC then two logical things may have happened,
either A. Microsoft realized that rare had some ownership over the 3 games and tried to get the games on xbla (Nintendo refused and microsoft forced rare to void the agreement)
or B. the agreement was timed until the launch of a new generation of hardware and Microsoft refused to allow Rare to renew the agreement.