A new video from Did you know that games Liam Robertson details how Toys for Bob, the developer of Crash and Spyro, was largely mismanaged by former parent company Activision Blizzard.
Much of the studio's problems stem from Activision's reaction to specific games that didn't perform well. After Crash 4: It's About Time had weak initial sales compared to 2017 Crash N. Sane Trilogy, The publisher has changed the handling of TfB projects.
Incident 4 continued to sell a reported 5 million copiesbut Activision Blizzard had already moved towards live-service titles before then. Toys for Bob was made a support the study for Call of Duty in 2021, and also tasked with supporting Blizzard with Role Playing Game 2.
The studio eventually made a live-service Crash game with 2023 Crash Team Brawl which itself had less than a full year of post-launch support before that ended.
Toys for Bob falls victim to industry's greatest enemy
After wrapping Incident 4a small team at Toys for Bob began brainstorming ideas for future entries. One idea explored for accident 5, which was in an early stage of production, featured a collaboration between Crash and Spyro the Dragon.
The project was later abandoned and it is also claimed that this was one of several single-player titles that were rejected by Activision Blizzard. Another title in question was a new Tony Hawk game after that series was remastered.
Alongside the intuition in accident 5, Robertson's video provides a detailed look at how the current retraction going on in the industry is partly driven by executive incompetence. Several former TfB staffers have said that Activision Blizzard actually didn't know what to do with the studio and Team fight specifically.
Since then Toys for Bob has became independent and collaborated with Microsoft for its first game post-Activision. It's unclear what that project will be at this time, but the studio is said to be looking to make the games it's best at in the future.