I find it pretty mind boggling that nobody at either Nintendo or Microsoft thought to bring up the GoldenEye question when changing hands of Rare. Nintendo clearly sold the rights to the Banjo / Conker / PD code as well as the character rights, which is what Microsoft wanted, but they didn't think to broach the subject of GoldenEye at all?
Nintendo bankrolled, published and distributed the original game and Rare was a second party (essentially part of Nintendo) - so I can see why Nintendo own the code. They seem to hold some claim to the copyright of the game too:
GoldenEye Manual said:
© 1997 Nintendo / Rare. Game by Rare. © 1962, 1995 Danjaq, LLC. & U.A.C. All rights reserved. © 1997 Eon Productions Ltd. & Mac. B. Inc. James Bond Theme by Monty Norman. Used by permission of EMI Unard Catalog Inc."
...but none of that seemed to stop the level designs appearing in some form in the Perfect Dark remake. If you're wondering who the other parties are - Danjaq is a holding company for the copyrights and trademarks of James Bond, UAC is United Artists Corporation (part of MGM). People mistakenly thought that when Sony bought MGM they had some claim to the bond rights, but they just have a deal with Danjaq on the movie related properties. The Bond game rights currently sit with Activision.
If Microsoft / Nintendo / Activision decided they couldn't agree to get the original re-released or remade, maybe Nintendo just figured they'd have a 'reimagined' game made instead. It would make sense. There might be nothing to stop Microsoft from doing a similar thing.
To be honest, as great as GoldenEye was, its dated quite badly. A re-imagining could be pretty cool, as long as the developer(s) understand what made the original so compelling in single player missions and in multiplayer. I wish Free Radical was still at full strength to be able to do this -- they would have done it justice.