Grant Kirkhope, the talented composer behind the iconic Banjo-Kazooie games, has said that he has “zero hope” of seeing a new Banjo-Kazooie game. He said that even if one did eventually come to light via Microsoft Game Studios “diehard fans would instantly hate it” no matter “how good it was.” Kirkhope later apologised if he had offended any fans with his remarks.
I’ve said it before … but .. I have zero hope for another Banjo game, plus all you die hard fans would instantly hate it and slag it off no matter how good it was , it never works.
— Grant Kirkhope (@grantkirkhope) January 23, 2025
Microsoft deserves all the hate it gets in regards to Rare games 🥰
A little cheeky to pretend that a kazooi banjo will be bad before it even comes out…
We can blame Microsoft for abandoning IPs but we too often forget that for a company only profitability counts… If they favored quality, we won’t have fifa and cod in spades which have been bad and monotonous for more than 20 years…. but they sell and that changes everything
He is right
Lol I love Kirkhope. True
I’d LOVE a new one, but idk if it could live up to the hype. I’d take a crappy Banjo 3 if it means Grant does more music for the series, however
With Mario always selling out, and Astro Bot having won GOTY awards (deservedly so), the platform genre is in need of a B&K game. What MS needs to do however is creating a studio specifically for games like this, and since they’ve been a 3rd party for almost a decade now absolutely prioritize releasing it on Switch 2 above any other platforms.
We all wanted a third entry but got N&B, we’ll buy a proper sequel.
Sadly, he is correct.
Mario is really the only big series left for good platforming. Sonic has jumped the shark in terms of quality, Mega Man is reduced to compilations, Tomb Raider has aged really poorly with time, and many other examples.
Kirby and the Forgotten Land is honestly pretty great and sold over 7 million copies. Hopefully we’ll see more 3D platforming from Kirby. But your point about platforming being a dying genre in general absolutely stands, especially on non-Nintendo platforms.
3D platformer wins GOTY and you think it’d fail? Old heads need to leave this fucking industry or shut the hell up. ffs
It would only suck if Microsoft well…Microsoft’s it. “BANJO IS NOW A THIRD PERSON SHOOTER WITH ONLINE ELEMENTS OH YEAH”
The sad thing is Mario Odyssey is essentially Banjo-Threeie. The structure of the game is far closer to Banjo then it is Mario 64.
Mario Odyssey is Mario Odyssey.
Have you even played BK & BT?
If it’s nuts and bolts 2 than he might have a point people were not happy with the direction they took with that game when it first came out.
The way I read this is that he believes it could never live up to the hype. Not that 3D platformers are dead. I think he just believes that no matter what gets made, people would be disappointed due to their very specific expectations not being met. It happens a lot when media is revived.