It’s a truth universally acknowledged, that a Real Gamer™ must hate major publishers. None of the big boys escape criticism, whether it’s Ubisoft for its perceived approach to copy-and-paste game design or EA for, well, absolutely everything, really. Activision has oft been a dirty word in enthusiast circles, presumably because it insists on releasing wildly popular Call of Duty titles every year, but while other companies have had a dire generation, let’s give Bobby Kotick and his underlings a morsel of credit for some of its extracurricular activities recently.
The reality is that even if you think first-person shooters will give you cooties, Activision has done a wonderful job resurrecting some of its older brands. All the talk at the start of the generation revolved around whether Sony could wrench the Crash Bandicoot franchise out of the publisher’s cold hard grasp; the discussion was partly fuelled by outright fandom, but also because no one truly believed that the American publisher could do the mischievous marsupial justice in this day and age.
Sales of Activision and Toys for Bob's 2020 platformer, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, have surpassed 5 million copies.
Loved Crash 4, that's more than I thought, I had a feeling that releasing at full price, right before current systems was a bad move, so 5 million is pretty good. I shudder to think how poor Rumble sold though.
Spyro apparently at 10 million, would be interesting seeing the platform split for these.
Oh look at that, and people were trying to say it was a flop.
We need more 3D platformers
Sony should bring Jak and Daxter back, Ubisoft with Rayman 4 and maybe Microsoft can work something out with Playtonic to do Banjo-Kazooie since most of the ex Rare members are there.
Jak and Dexter along with sly. I would love even remakes man since Sony now a days don’t want to take chances of smaller single player games it seems
@fox: “Oh look at that, and people were trying to say it was a flop.”
Correct me if I’m wrong this was released in 2020 for all major platforms except for mobile as far as I can remember and PC a year later, and only sold 5 millions copies in 4 years?
Yes I would consider it a flop I seen games on PlayStation and Xbox sale 2 millions in a year and be called a flop.
It doesn't matter how many platforms it's on or how long it took to get there, 5 million sales is a great number period.
So where’s crash 5 ?
It’s been 4 years and nothing and it’ll be another 6+ if lucky.
I love the franchise and was one of the few ones that purchased 4 but I didn’t like it, it felt empty and no fun.
Remember activision/ Microsoft is all about the money if a franchise don’t perform it gets shelved no matter what we think or want.
@Asplundh,Victor isn't wrong, though.
5 million *is* a great number. But it took awhile to get there...And it was on PS4,XB1,PS5,XBX,PC and Switch. Movies and music will often gauge the commercial success of their respective products by "first week" sales and usually the first two weeks of a theatrical run. Shawshank Redemption, widely considered one of the best movies of all time earned only 16 million during it's theatrical run, against a 25 million dollar budget.
Most AAA games need to sell roughly 1.5 - 2 million copies to just break even these days. I tried to look up what this game's budget was, and couldn't find much.
I should state that I adore platformers. Love these games, love Jak and Daxter, Love the Sly games etc...But this wasn't exactly vindication for the sub-genre. I hope they were able to turn a profit and I wish more of these games were made.
Or go back a bit further...
An updated Commander Keen, Jill of the Jungle, Crystal Caves, Bio Menace, or Jazz Jackrabbit would be pretty cool.
Hocus Pocus, Halloween Harry, Monster Bash, Xargon OG Duke Nukems
Remember when Bethesda announced a new Commander Keen for mobile at E3 2019 with an animated trailer?
Jill of the Jungle being from Epic Games is funny to me.
Is flop the word of the month or something. Every time I come here lately all I seem to read is this games a flop that games a flop your a flop I have a floppy flipity flipity flop.
I don't keep up with final fantasy but apparently one of the new ones it's a flop for selling 2+ million in a few months on a single platform.
Now crash is a flop? Yes it releases on all platforms but in this day and age 4 million in 4 years seems fine by me.
Yeah, very low quality bait when Xbox probably accounted for 10% or less of those sales.
Platformers never died out, THQ just flooded the market with licensed crap and the industry shifted to copying COD cause gaming was "maturing".
Exactly gamers grew up mature games took off but many players who grew up on the nes, she's even Mario 64 are having kids and introducing them to platformers again so I can see a renewed interest in the genre.
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You should define what a real gamer is you ask anybody what a real gamer is and the definition will be different. A real gamer in my definition does not care about console wars, and is in it for the feel of the game the enjoyment of the game relating to the characters and story of the game and says wow this is a great game. As a customer I hate EA I hate their business practices I hate how they close down good studios I hate how they litter a game with loot boxes and microtransactions I will not support EA. Activision releasing older titles as remakes is nothing new other companies have done it I like Spyro and Crash but I will not buy them day one I wait until they are cheap then I buy them. As a customer I just don't like Activision either I like Namco,Sega,Insomniac,Epic,Naug hty Dog,Santa Monica,Ubisoft,Quantic Dream,Banpresto,Gust,KOEI Tecmo, and SquareEnix. Again as for Nintendo's Disney approach to the new Mario collection releasing it as a limited number run both digital and physical then throwing it back into the vault is a dumb idea. I want the Mario collection just for Galaxy and Sunshine but as a customer especially if I am buying said limited number run game I expect Mario 64 to be cleaned up looks wise and have it polished. If modders have been doing it for years then why the hell can't Nintendo do it even Disney when they take a movie out of the vault for a limited time even polishes up their old cartoon movies. If Nintendo keeps going down the Disney route with limited time run then goes back into the vault it will eventually kick them in the ass.
Activision laid off hundreds of employees to save costs in the same year they made record breaking profits and gave Bobby Kottick a disgustingly large bonus on top of his already obscene paycheck.
They left a huge library of properties dormant for years so they could force more studios into a cycle of developing Call of Duty games.
They lock demos for upcoming games behind preorders.
Remember when they tried to sell Spyro 1 on a disc titled a trilogy without 2 and 3 included? They had to be downloaded.
Honestly Tony Hawk, CTR, Crash 1 -3, Spyro 1 - 3 were all great but Activision is run by absolute scumbags and no we should absolutely not let them think we forget that
They need to rid of the 1X to ease up confusion and ppl will pick up the Series S. Keep the 1S as the only ast gen console.
No
You immediately lost me when trying to be funny with all gamers hating big publishers. Just tells me you're overlooking the actual criticisms they deserve, for the sake of patting Activision on the back.