Earlier this year, Gamasutra interviewed James Thomas and Justin Cook, key members of the original Viva Piñata team. They had some interesting things to say regarding their relationship with Nintendo and the upcoming Viva Piñata entry for DS.
- Rare still has an in-house Game Boy team; Microsoft never wanted to change that. Cook guesses, "They're not in the handheld market, so they never saw [Nintendo] as a rival, I think."
- Nintendo requested that Rare do the Donkey Kong Country ports for GBA because they want the ports to be done by the people who made the original games. "I think there's still a really good relationship between Rare and Nintendo," said Thomas. "Yeah, we get on really well."
- Thomas also said that Nintendo is free to put Rare's previous Banjo titles up on the Virtual Console, but Rare still fully owns the property.
- Rare is confident in the DS version of Viva Piñata. Both Cook and Thomas agree that the stylus fits the game really well, as a god-type game.