Crash Bandicoot 5 Reportedly Cut in Favour of More Live Service Games

Regarding Crash 5's selling point (as I wrote in the NLife article covering this); as great as another Crash & Spyro crossover would have been, it should have been just a separate individual spin-off and not the focus of a mainline CB game. Crash and Spyro need to be able to stand on their own.
The Academy of Evil's return and the "going into the baddies' mind" plot would have been sufficient enough imo.

Still sad news for the Crash & Spyro fanbases either way.

No one liked that. LikelySatan will remember that...

I don't know how well it would have sold, I think a lot of people who bought Crash 4 would have avoided a new toys for bob entry.

EA, Rockstar and Activision: once live services began to print them money, their single player output was affected greatly.

This is why many of us are glad of Concord's apparent failure, despite the hand-wringing from some. If it were to enjoy the level of success Jim Ryan and the bean counters at Sony surely anticipated, it would only have lead to a push for more and more GAAS to be produced at the expense of single player projects.

I still wish CTR Nitro Fueled was ported to PC and even received a PS5 port. Such a massive missed opportunity.

Also I really like the premise of what Toys for Bob were cooking for a potential Crash 5. Shame it was shot down.

@jrt87 its amazing how wrong that last part of your comment is about PlayStation.

Literally the reason to support Concorn is to fund PlayStation’s future single player games and yet people still can’t understand that.

I'm still angry about THPS.

And yet there are people who are confused as to why others are happy to see live service games like Concord or Suicide Squad fail

I’m a THPS nut so I already have a hatred of ActiBlizz for the way they treated VV, what a surprise they treated Toys for Bob the same way. Such a genuine disrespect for anybody who enjoyed their games, we’re just marks to them.

@Jacko11 I don't know what sort of bizarre reasoning has led you to that conclusion, but no. Live service games don't exist to fund single player games.

@jrt87 Maybe you are happy but gamers are really blind. Failure means less money and less money means less games and that includes singleplayer games. Also failure means people losing their jobs not a thing to be happy about.

The game looks fine is not stuffed to the brim with microtransactions and cheaper then several €70 games that are monetized to hell and back. Also a balanced offering of multi and singleplayer is not a bad thing.

Finally a good decision from the management

@Jacko11 I've given examples of AAA publishers whose recent history has led me to my conclusion. You're just blindly asserting something you hope would be the case to defend the much maligned Concord.

If Concord was a runaway success and proved a lucrative investment, they'd commission three more big budget GAAS instead of single player games.

Sounds about right. Cant keep milking the gamers with 1 crash game like they can something live service can they. Scumbags.

Damn,guess I'm not getting that Spyro 4. Wonder if xbox will keep Activision as a call of duty machine and all other ips will die?

You never know... it might re-emerge as the free-to-play, live-service game Cash Bandicoot 4.

Single player games (and Factions II) die before release so that Concord could.... die upon release. Jim Ryan's circle of life, it's like pottery, it rhymes.

@Jacko11 they'll just need to focus on making great single player games and sell those to fund their single player games lol, they can even make multiplayer games like back in the day, like Killzone, just no GaaS

@jrt87 THIS!!!! Here's also hoping Astro is successful because they would also sent a good message to them about variety in single player genres and that not every game needs to be a bloated giant production that costs hundreds of millions and over half a god damned decade to make

Crash 4 is either the best entry in the series or 2nd best. I loved that game.

no big deal , crash has been milked already . give us something new even if it’s live service , i don’t care.

Sucks for Xbox owners, no guarantee it would be one to come to PS anyway.

No point worrying about what is made/cancelled elsewhere.

@jrt87 only a handful of loud mouths that can’t fathom playing games with other people are glad concord failed because of live service. most people are glad that it failed because it looks generic , isnt appealing or something new enough, and political reasons

They put Crash, THPS, and possibly also Spyro in the coffin which means no reason for me to buy Activision games since they only care about COD. No more creativity, just pumped out COD year in-year out.

Heck, i don't remember what new IP that Activision developed in the last 5 years? Sekiro wasnt't even developed by them.

@Jacko11 Where did you heard if Concord, Helldivers 2, or any live service games success = more money for Sony to greenlight single player games? No offense bro, but that just doesn't makes any sense at all.

That argument from x-box gamers that Microsoft should be aloud to buy ActiBliz as they would of course ensure the ip they held other than CoD would get greenlit always made me chuckle. 😏

@Gunnerzaurus exactly...

@nomither6 what political reasons are there that "most people" are glad it's failed?

@Jacko11 literally no idea where you're getting that. It's the opposite. If live service games are runaway successes they'll just make more of them instead. Concord failing and Wukong being a monster success is the best thing that's happened for Story games in ages.

May many more flops come their way.

More the merrier when it comes to live service game

Black Myth Wukong breaks records and sells millions of copies. Single Player.

Concord breaks records for all the wrong reasons and is dead on arrival. Live service.

Take the hint Sony.

Was it just me who couldn't actually find a physical version of Crash 4 for ages? I wanted to buy it new but had to wait months to get a used copy. I've never had that happen before and can't imagine it helped sales.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner This would have came to PS… This hypothetical Crash 5 cancellation was probably even before Microsoft had even announced they was buying Activision. This was something they started working on after Crash 4 in 2020, and probably got cancel 2021 and forced the team to start working on Crash Team rumble.

If theyre not gonna use crash and spyro ip anymore then let sony buy those ip

Wow. Gaming capitalism at its finest that company sees 5 million sales as not good enough.

Extreme capitalism is ruining our hobby. We are just playing the same games on repeat.

@Randinator123 Nope. They are still most likely still using those IP… Toy for Bob still a very cryptic image up on their website that may be pointing to a new Spyro game.

Wonder if Xbox could bring it back fingers crossed but doubt it😭

@Keyblade-Dan

Yes, it's very rare I preorder games but I digitally preordered Astrobot. Hopefully its success is to the moon so Sony get the message.

I will never forgive them for not doing THPS 3+4

Let greed be the driving force and when our faces are on the floor let the management out with golden parachutes. They are precious!

Well this was a stupid decision wasn't it.......

@Netret0120

"Black Myth Wukong breaks records and sells millions of copies. Single Player.

Concord breaks records for all the wrong reasons and is dead on arrival. Live service.

Take the hint Sony."

Helldivers II breaks records and sells millions of copies. Live Service.

Oh wait. That's not how confirmation bias/cherry picking works.

Wow, that really stinks.

@Jacko11 Sony isn't producing live service games to fund single player games! 😂 Sony is producing live service games to make money for their shareholders. Sony would drop single player games in a heartbeat if they had multiple live service money spinners.

Activision and GAAS are simply garbage.

@Jacko11 : You say that Sony is supporting Concord, a live-service game, in order to ”fund their future single-player games”, yet you don’t provide any valid explanation, let alone why people appearently don’t understand this.

If you want your statement to make more sense then zero here then back it up with proof.

Of course they did. How many more live service games will have to fail before these publishers realize IT'S. NOT. GOING. TO. WORK.

Aside from maybe Helldivers, not a single LSG has actually been succesfull in the last few months! ***** live service.

It's a real shame. I sure would love to see more Crash and Spyro single player games.

Activision is clearly on drugs.wtf.crash 4 its about time sold a lot of copies.word up son

@VicerExciser See, that's exactly what I mean! Like, how blind are these companies thinking they can rival Fortnite etc? At SOME point they have to use their brain and just make games that EVERYONE can enjoy.. offline.. right..?

@jrt87 @BigJoze @Andy22385 @Coolmusic @Ainu20 @PuppetMaster

I’ll copy and paste my comment from months ago saying the same thing:

“People not understanding the importance of live service for PlayStation’s future, and being able to continue making all the amazing 1st party titles is honestly scary.
Not supporting the initiative that will literally fund the current and next generation of games from Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Santa Monica etc.
Its almost as if these people in the PushSquare comments have never read a single article containing Shawn Layden quotes.
Sad times.“

The thought process you all have is genuinely scary and shows a complete lack of understanding for how things work.

Did you see how little money Spider-Man makes from the leak? Risks like that will benefited so much more from a GaaS that takes off even close to Fortnite levels.

Single Player is the bread and butter of PlayStation, but that bread and butter is getting more costly every generation.

Shawn Layden said it, i’m just a believer in the truth of it, something you all apparently are not.

@Jacko11 You've managed to use more words to say the same thing, but that's still no justification. Calling other people's understanding into question when you fail to properly explain your reasoning is not a good look.

The idea that we need to support live service games because they will fund future single player titles is still just as absurd as the first time I read it. If we want to guarantee the future of single player titles, we need to keep spending our money on those. Not on something else.

Obviously they're doing that in an attempt to increase their overall financial situation, but you can say that about basically anything they do. You might not want to accept it, but the more revenue a publisher makes on live service games, the more they will move their focus towards that and away from single player stuff. Money is the only language executives understand.

@Jacko11 if they don't make a lot of money from single player games, then they should spend less money making them. There are small studios out there making games that look AAA, like that new game called Defect for example. (In the context of my opinion of not wanting to see more GaaS)

They will ultimately try and do what makes the most money. If they try GaaS and it works they'll keep doing it, they may make a couple single player games to satisfy the likes of you. But I don't care about any of that.

Even if I did play a GaaS game, I personally never spend money in these games, so they're making nothing off me anyway...

If they do GaaS and flop, and then they can't afford to make single player games, then oh ***** well. I'll go play a single player games by a studio who can manage it, or, play older games or no games. I'm no gonna be some puppet in propping up a multimillion pound company so they can afford to make more GaaS games and maybe some single player games.

I'm not dismissing GaaS as a protest, I simply couldn't give a ***** about the vast majority of them, I like firing into a normal multiplayer or single player.

Also, I echo what @Ainu20 said too

@Jacko11

I'm sure Sony would prefer the modest profits from Spiderman to the collosal loss and major PR disaster of Concord.

Its embarassing failure is going to make it even harder for them to launch this mythical golden goose Fortnite rival your entire argument depends on.

Activision decided to pull out of single player titles in favour of live service games"....
More like due to Bobby Kotick "investing" in an army of lawyers & NDA "settlements",trying to get the Microsoft buyout across the line & give himself a golden parachute!🙄

This doesn't entirely mean a hypothetical Crash 5 is out of the question, it just means this specific version was scrapped during development.

@Jacko11 Can you put the link where Shawn Layden said that?

And even if he said that, the current situation for live service games doesn't work like he said. Epic Games for example, they got tons of money from Fortnite. But did you see any single player games coming from them for the last 7 years since they released Fortnite?

Or EA with Apex Legend. They got a lot of money from Apex but where's Titanfall 3? None. Where's new Mirror Edge? None. Where's Brutal Legend 2? None.
Last year they only released two single player games; SW Jedi Survivor which was greenlight because the first game was a big success and Dead Space 1 remake which i'm sure it got greenlight because EA seen Capcom had a big success with RE 2 remake.

"Did you see how little money Spider-Man makes from the leak? Risks like that will benefited so much more from a GaaS that takes off even close to Fortnite levels."

From Sony financial report, Spiderman 2 sold 11 million copies
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/05/marvels-spider-man-2-swings-11-million-sales-as-sony-calls-ps5-exclusive-a-great-success

If we do the math with 70 x 11 million, roughly Sony earned $770 million income. Cut with the budget which i read was around $270 million, Sony still earned half billion USD from Spider Man 2, which is a lot of money and definitely better than what Concord can generate right now with 300 active players lol.

"Single Player is the bread and butter of PlayStation, but that bread and butter is getting more costly every generation"

The right answer for that is NOT pumping out 20 live service games but scaled down the project aka less focus on graphics and more on gameplay & story.

Just like Asad Qibilzash said about the future of video games:
"The focus is going to shift from graphics or visuals to immersive narratives that resonate long after the controller is set down. Regarding PlayStation's role in this evolution, I see it as a destination defined by community and a commitment to quality, unexpected and memorable experiences."
https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/creative-entertainment-vision/interview/3.html

I quite agreed with him. Just look at Nintendo for example, they remain profitable with their games which i doubt they cost $200-300 million to make. Why? They focus less on graphics but put a lot of effort for gameplay.

Or From Software. Their games doesn't has ultra realistic graphic either but the artstyle are gorgeous and the gameplay are amazing too, which is the reason why their games sold millions of copies. I don't see From Soft making a single live service games for the past decade either.

@Jacko11 buy yet with it being more costly it still makes money. Concord put Sony in a hole. Spiderman 2 made a fortune.

When are these publishers going to learn that there is only so much room for these live service games?! Fortnite, CoD, Rainbow 6, Sea of Thieves, Apex Legends, Overwatch, WoW, FFXIV Online, Destiny....

There IS simply NO ROOM for new, generic versions of essentially the same games that already exist! Concord is DOA already, and after nearly 8 YEARS in development, that studio will probably suffer massive layoffs very soon, if not close as a result.

The industry doesn't need MORE games, it needs BETTER games. And while true that virtually anything these days is derivative of something else, good content still needs something unique in order to stand out. More single-player games in franchises that people love and have legions of fans (like Crash and Spyro) should be a no-brainer, but because they can't monetize it, nickel & diming the customer to death for the foreseeable future, sadly it's now low priority for most publishers.

If it weren't for Crash Bandicoot, I would not buy anything from Activision at all, and even they're treating the franchise like an afterthought now. Such a crummy company...

@Ainu20 @naruball I don't know why you both bother? They either don't understand or choose not to because it dosnt fit their narratives. You two are very literate and always put your views across exceptionally well but I think sometimes the context is lost because some people just don't understand.

@Jacko11 Name me the single player game that GTA online funded for Rockstar. I'll wait.

@naruball

Exception does not disprove the rule.

For every helldivers, there are several cancelled Live service games and Concords

@Jacko11 Like I thought, you don't know game dev. RDR2 was in development before GTAO came out, and GTA VI still isnt out and its 2024. Neither depended on the money made from GTA Online. That money went to shareholders and execs. But you know what was cancelled? Single player dlc for GTAV. 😂😂

@UntilRespawn you’re actually still trying to use Rockstar for comparison, wild.

@Beetlebum91 I agree with this. I like Crash Bandicoot and N.Sane was fun, as well as CTR but Crash 4 was just not enjoyable. It was obnoxiously difficult when compared to N.Sane. Crash games always had a healthy level of challenge to them but 4 disregarded that entirely and it doing so likely put off a good chunk of the casual audience. Not to mention Wumpa league being dead on arrival.

@QwarktasticLombax I own it digitally so I keep making the mistake of coming back to it thinking I'm going to have a good time but never do. Levels are too long, too many boxes, keep saying to myself "how did that kill me?" And crash feels weird to control like he's running up an escalator. I can play through nsane trilogy fine but every level in crash 4 feels like stormy ascent.