Developer Rare has announced that the second installment in the Banjo trilogy will arrive for download on Xbox Live Arcade in April. The enhanced version of Banjo-Tooie was previously only given a non-specific release timetable only suggesting that it would see the light of day on the Xbox 360 in early 2009.

The conversion of Banjo-Tooie will take advantage of the Xbox 360, including the ability to be run at 720p, which gives the game a high resolution look that is far from the original Nintendo 64 version of the title. The Xbox 360 release will also add back in the Stop’n’Swap feature that was cut from the original release of the game. This feature will allow players to use items that they collected in the first Banjo-Kazooie game that was already released on Xbox Live Arcade in order to unlock content in Banjo-Tooie.

News has also surfaced that the third title in the Banjo series called Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts has only sold a dismal 140,000 copies despite the fact that the game has received many positive reviews and high praise. To further add to the disappointment, Nuts and Bolts was priced at only $40 to help drive sales of the title.

While Rare has not yet commented publically on the disappointing sales, we are pretty sure that they can’t be happy with sales numbers like these, especially with the game only going for $40. It really is kind of a shame, as we found the title to be quite good; and this just adds to the speculation and continued discussion that many analysts have been engaged in, suggesting that Rare might be a studio whose time has passed and the types of games that Rare has been known for in the past just don’t translate well with today’s console gamers.