Microsoft announced today that Banjo-Kazooie, remake of the original Nintendo 64 game, is to be released on the Xbox Live Arcade on November 26th, 2008. The game will be priced at 1200 MS points and will contain graphical enhancements, along with achievements and gamerscore support.
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There are 50 achievements with a total of 1000 points.
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From GAMER.tm: "Rare has said that Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts would never have worked with motion sensing control, and that it laughed when rumours emerged that the game would use such a system.

"Recalling the incident [where a Microsoft executive appeared to confirm motion control for Banjo] with GAMER.tm recently, Rare literally laughed off suggestions that it ever intended to use motion control, and went on to explain that Nuts & Bolts is too complex to work effectively with such a control system.

"[When the rumours first emerged] we were like, 'haa haa ha!'" Rare senior animator, Elissa Miller recalled.

"Lead artist Neill Harrison then went on to explain that while a few elements could have worked using a device such as the Wii Remote, it would have been impossible to use it with some of the game's major elements.
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Fresh from a hands-on with the game, GameBrit list all the achievements from the upcoming Banjo Kazooie sequel.
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Rare says the game is 'immense' and they've only touched on what it has to offer:

Speaking to VideoGamer at a recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts press day, Rare's lead technical artist Neill Harrison and senior animator Elissa Miller have teased fans with news that there's plenty of the game still to reveal.

"There are two entire game worlds that nobody has seen yet - we might be revealing those at Tokyo," said Miller. "The thing is, it's such a massive game that what we've shown so far is barely a quarter of the actual experience. It's an immense game, which makes it quite hard to develop, but it also means there's loads to see and do... we've barely touched on it."

Harrison added: "There are lots of components we've not shown off yet. And there are over 100 challenges - we've only ever shown off a handful of them."
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at a recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts press day at Microsoft's Reading HQ, Rare's senior animator Elissa Miller said that the time it takes gamers to play through a modern video game is pretty much "irrelevant".

Asked about the apparent move away from linear gaming to much more free experiences - LittleBigPlanet, Spore, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - Miller said this is the kind of gaming she enjoys most.

"For some people, that's the most interesting part. I know it's what I enjoy the most. Rather than play a game through from start to finish, I like to get lost in it," said Miller.

She added: "The amount of time it takes to actually complete a game is almost irrelevant, nowadays."
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Speaking to VideoGamer.com at a recent Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts press day at Microsoft's Reading HQ, Rare's lead technical artist Neill Harrison has confirmed DLC for the upcoming Xbox 360 title is possible, but they haven't "really thought about it yet".

Regarding DLC Harrison said: "We haven't announced anything, or even really thought about it yet, but it's certainly possible... People always assume we're not allowed to say, but actually most of the time we don't even know! But yeah, we'll finish this and then we'll think about what's next."
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CVG writes: "The next Banjo-Kazooie game could expand upon the vehicle-building concept of upcoming sequel Nuts & Bolts - provided the new game goes down well with the public, Rare has told CVG.

"[Nuts & Bolts] is like an introduction to what we could do," senior animator Ellissa Miller told CVG. "If we went on and did some more then we could push it. If it was accepted and people enjoyed it then we could definitely push it in a much bigger direction. This is like an opening to a new type of gaming I guess."
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OXM reports that Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts did originally start life as a platformer.

However, Rare's Neil Harrison admits that it felt stale and didn't fit in with today's market.

"We thought well, we'll just do another platform game as Banjo Kazooie," Harrison explains. "We did that for a bit and as gamers and as developers, it just felt a little bit stale. It felt like it didn't fit in today's market. With the 360, there's just so much more we can do, we thought we'd try something different."
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In the latest issue of OXM there is a small segment on Nuts and bolts. It states that the Banjo 64 coming to XBLA will be an exact port and specifically states "will include the Nintendo logo on the title screen". It then says that Microsoft made a deal with Nintendo...
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