You know, Goldeneye came out before Perfect Dark. Also, Perfect Dark has the best sniper rifle ever.

Wow, that looks terrible. I don't know what they were thinking. The old log o was just fine...

A gun doesn't make a game. And it's post Goldeneye, thus making Goldeneye even more impressive.

Looks like they make tires or something.
Mass Effect has my favourite sniper rifle so far.
PS. PD > Goldeneye unless you're a Bond freak.
Buy the updated version on XBL?
N64 version is my favourite shooter period. Just...perfection. The multiplayer is so awesome you can recreate the elevator scene from The Matrix for godsakes. And the bots are so good and the options so extensive you can make a million scenarios to save and play at any time and not even require people to enjoy them (I didn't know anyone into PD back then :P).
Wish Alpha Protocol had Perfect Dark's AI...
That's Tecmo, not MS. But yes, KI3 please.

Basically, if your company is losing momentum, there are two official sure-fire solutions: You can make a new logo, or you can make a new org chart. Of the two, the latter is the more popular by far. However, both approaches share the same problem, in that they only bring about the illusion of change, not change itself, and so neither of them actually work. This has not been discovered by company execs however, so both approaches are still widely used, with no discernible results.

Personally I think that it's a poor design. I can understand that they wanted a new, modern logo, but this one is very simplistic. Something like that could work for a housing developer, or a company that produces some sort of machines, but not a gaming company.
It will scale well, and will look ok in full color and monochromatic, but that's it.
A gaming studio should have something with more personality and style. Something that says "hey, we make cool game" not something that says "We are Rare, we could make shoes for all you care".
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/09/beautiful-and-creative-logo-designs-for-your-inspiration/ - something more in the line of those

Even if they'd just used the half R from the old logo as the capital letter in the new logo
Also weird that the kotaku bloke didn't mention the oldest gaming logo still in use; Atari. Sure they're not the real atari but the LOGO is still there

That's because when they joined M$ a lot of people left the company.

Huh, that explains things.
I swear, DKC is one of theose games who are on my "To buy their license" list 8P

Well, those new logos are not so bad, at least they are in today's style, very clean and pure.
But yes, new logos of long-time famous companies will always be bad in comparison, just cause we new the old one very well. Doesn't mean they can't change it.
I remember having the same sad nostalgeek feelling when LucasArts changed their logo.
Oh, and I believed Rare were already dead, though, when Micro$oft acquired them...

You're right; the rest of the game made the game. Though the acting sucked, the rest of it was perfect. It still is perfect, now that it's been up-rezzed.

@chautemoc
I don't have a 360.

Even more than the period between Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, when a significant chunk of Rare splintered off to form Free Radical Design? (The Free Radical folk mostly get credited with Goldeneye in their Rare days, but apparently did a lot of work on Perfect Dark as well, albeit not having stayed long enough to see it to completion.)
All of this said, I wish I didn't make the dumb move several years ago of "trading in" all my N64 games save for Perfect Dark. Most of them weren't Rare titles, but two of the most notable ones were Donkey Kong 64 and Jet Force Gemini. (I've since sourced another DK64 cart, but no luck on JFG thus far.)

what's the thought behind changing logos?
rare are not the first nor the last one to do it.
Are they trying to cater to new audience? Are we humans so gullible that a shiny next-gen logo decides whether we like a product or not? Probably but it kills little part of me you know...