Does anyone remember who The Beatles of gaming are? It's Rareware back before they were bought by Microsoft. You would probably put at least 2 or 3 if not 4 titles in your top 10 favorite games for the N64. That said, they were bought by Microsoft in 2002 and the founders left in 2007 to "pursue other opportunities".
Now I understand why they left in 2007 due to the fact that they saw their company becoming a kinect game maker (that's the theory I have as to why they left) and why they may have left Nintendo. My assumption as to why they left Nintendo is money, can't be anything else. Microsoft is top dog when it comes to money.
So they joined Microsoft made a few good games such as Kameo (opinions vary) and Viva Pinata but didn't really follow up after that. Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts wasn't bad but the fact that it felt like Microsoft pushed them to use there mascot (yes Banjo was the Rare mascot and I fully believe that Microsoft told them to do that) to help the game sell severely disappointed me.
As for everything else, the original Banjo Kazooie lead designer Gregg Mayles still is with the company but is the main guy for Rare now. I just can't help think that Microsoft is just using Rare to develop horrible games for the Kinect, it just makes Rare look worse having to make games for such a horrible piece of technology. I also feel that Microsoft Game Studios just abuses it's developers in general, it feels like a lot of the developers just don't have a say in what they do... Didn't Bungie leave them?