I do think that people are getting a little carried away with this, lets say that Rare and activision are talking. Why does that mean that they will become a 3rd party themselves and develop for other consoles. And release Nintendo owned franscises on other consoles, etc, etc, etc.
Incase some of you have forgotten, this isn't the first time that a game developed by Rare has been published by some other then Nintendo.
Take Conkers Bad Fur day for example (Great game), Nintendo published it in america. BUT, they didn't publish it in europe, because of it's controversial nature. THQ published it in europe, but did that mean that CBFD would be released on PSX as well. No, all this could mean, is that perhaps for some of the mature games Rare develops. Nintendo would rather have another company like Activision publish it. Perhaps just in europe, or perhaps just in america.
Thats if Activision are talking to Rare at all, i think people have jumped on the idea and made up there own story. Like Activision to buy Rare, Activision to publish Rare games, Star fox adventures to be released on PS2, Perfect dark zero to be released on PS2, etc. And i don't think the money they make is nessacerily a problem, a lot of there games end up being big sellers. And it's not like they've lost in a big investment like Square did with the Final Fantasy movie (which ultimately pushed them to start developing for Gamecube (along with other factors tho)). If money were that important to them, they wouldn't delay there games so much

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But seriously, i don't believe it's true.