So Sony isn't getting Crash Bandicoot back after all...

Last week, rumors swirled around just as rapidly as Crash Bandicoot’s spin attack that signs were pointing to a possible acquisition by Sony of its one-time iconic mascot from his current rights holder, Activision. After taking down the official Crash Bandicoot website and all mentions of Crash from its publisher page, immediately speculation begun: was Sony planning on a revival of its much-beloved platforming series for next-gen?

In a confirmation with Game Informer, Activision stated that the studio currently still owns the rights to the character and franchise, which means that the rumors of an acquisition by Sony may unfortunately be false, despite getting many fans’ hopes up. However, Activision’s statement also leaves some slight hope that maybe we will see the beloved Bandicoot return, in one shape or another. The publisher mentioned in response: “Activision owns Crash Bandicootand we continue to explore ways in which we could bring the beloved series back to life.”

Many Crash reboots have had their stops and starts in the last several years, but could Activision (or maybe even Sony, later on?) be priming for bringing back the series? The rumors are still swirling around like crazy, but here’s to hoping maybe we’ll see a return for Crash sometime in the future.

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So Sony hasn't bought it back, and Naughty Dog isn't developing the next PlayStation exclusive Crash Bandicoot.

Although it sounds like Activision is looking to revive the series, and it might be possible that if they do so, they make it PlayStation exclusive.

Lol, yeah right. With Activision at the helm.

lol cows. always prematurely hyping things.

Sony never owned crash. Universal did, and when their game studio was bought by Vivendi, it went with them. This doesn't mean the IP can't be licensed (or it's all being kept secret until VGX reveal.)

Late, i already posted a thread about them figuring out ways to bring the series back.

But who came up with that?

People who don't know what basic road signs look like. Quite literally, type in the right of way sign and you will almost instantly get a picture of the yellow diamond.

Oh..that... Makes sense, I guess.

flopzor

No Activision we don't want you to do crash. Sell it or let it die.

I mean that is why this whole thing happened in a trailer there was a car driving and people saw a combination of signs that made them thing Sony was taking Crash out the trash.

Sales were so good in PSone days. Tomb Raider, Crash, Gran

Turismo, Final Fantasy all (10) million sellers.

Hard to imagine nowadays

Tomb Raider wasn't a 10 millio n seller. Crash games combined did around 28 or so million. The last few Crash games did around 16 million that's not bad. GT5 and GT5o did about 15+ million, Final Fantasy sold around 15 million including XIII-Xiii-2 and XIV.

This makes me sick to my stomach. Activision now thinks people wants to buy it. Well, I'm not buying a crash game unless it's returned to the guys who made it great

Microsoft might end up buying Crash after seeing the huge interest from people for the game.

why would they the franchise has been dead since the ps1 era

Activisions last Crash game has a 77 on MC. The one before I think had a 78. Before that Activision did not make the games. Universal made some good games.

Why do you still care about a character hardly relevant since the ps2 gen? If you want to play a good Crash game, go play the first three or Twinsanity. Heck if you own a ps3 you can get the first three plus the racing game right now, so there's no excuse. That's Crash for you.

It was pretty relevant this gen until 2010. In fact, since you only mentioned twinsanity you must not know about most of the other crash games. Only Boom bang/COTT/MOM are actually below bar and even then the latter 2 are not bad (Boom bang is shit though.)

Meh, its most likely being kept secret until the VGAs.

To be honest, I've always thought Spyro was better than Crash (as was Insomniac > NaughtyDog in that era, before they went full potato this gen and turned to shitte), but I'd much rather see a Spyro revitalization but made by NaughtyDog or SSM.

Too bad Activision makes far too much money off of that Skylanders fuckery for Sony to pry their grubby paws off of it.

Im pretty sure the Skylanders Spyro series is activisions largest revenue stream outside of Call of Duty (citation needed)

As long as Activision has it, it should stay dead. They didn't bring Spyro back. They mutilated his corpse and paraded it around to promote their new cashgrab scheme. After the first game was a success, they dropped Spyro from the title to make it its own franchise even though it really always was.

GET OUT. NOW.

To be honest, everyone loves a good opportunity to hate Activision, but this one really wasnt their fault. The franchise was turned to shitte before they had any involvement.

Universal got bought out by Digital Eclipse (who made Enter the Dragonfly, which scored a 2.8 here). Digital Eclipse got bought out by Vivendi, who got bought out by Activision.

@Jakandsigz: what's your criteria for being relevant? MC scores?

After the ps1 Crash basically turned into multi-platform shit. WoC was overwhelmingly disappointing upon release, the later kart games tried (and failed) to copy ctrs' success formula, the 2d gba games were pretty meh overall. Twinsanity was fun, I gotta give them that. Then this titan thing came along and the vast majority of crash fans outright hated it, myself included - I played the console and ds versions of cott, found them too uninspired, sold them soon after. Didn't even bother with MoM. These games are nothing like the past crash games, it's as if activision is hopelessly looking for a new audience of kids to enjoy them.

Now suppose Sony gets Crash back sometime, then what will we get? Extremely narrow 3d collectathon platforming? These went out of fashion since the end of psx/n64 and you may have warm memories about them, but they really wouldn't work now as you'd like to think they would. ND is busy with other projects and I can't name a developer other than the guys at Nintendo that's good at making awesome platformers. It's more probable that Crash would return with a different, open world style gameplay, though that would probably alienate fans even more (I'd be down for more of Twinsanity tho).

Just move on, we have bigger and better things now plus all the old Crash games are readily available for anyone going through nostalgia phase. Really, I can see activision just bringing crash back as a skylander or something, like spyro (who shares the same tragic tale of being irrelevant since ps2 gen).

Meh. The series isn't relevant anymore, and it wouldn't do as well in a modern environment. Best to let sleeping bandicoots lie.