Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogyhas now sold 20 million copies. The collection, which compiled remade versions of the three originalNaughty Doggames, has sold steadily since its release in 2017, and now boasts more sales than any other game in the series. You would think the studio that made a game that successful would get to keep making cool games right? Especially considering that following the successful launch of the N. Sane Trilogy, that studio went on to another wildly successful remake collection,Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, which became thefastest-selling release in the history of the franchise.
How did parent companyActivision Blizzardreward those back-to-back triumphs? By removing the name, Vicarious Visions, which the developer had borne for 30 years, renaming it Blizzard Albany, and assigning it to work as a support studio on theDiablofranchise.
The End Of Vicarious Visions
This was a bad decision for a lot of reasons. Vicarious Visions had often handled this kind of unshowy work throughout its history, porting console games to handhelds, doing support work on Destiny 2, and generally being really good at making the best games possible within really tight constraints. Often, it was reconceiving games entirely, like when it transformed console game Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland into the GBA/DS title Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land.
Ever play a surprisingly good Tony Hawk or Guitar Hero handheld port? You probably have Vicarious Visions to thank.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 were more of the same in a way — VV was still working to translate another studio’s work to a new platform — but at a larger scale than it typically had the chance to on prior projects. These were big, triple-A, multi-platform PC and console releases, pillars of its publisher’s release calendar. These were far cries from its efforts reworking Tony Hawk games for handheld in the ’00s.
This was the moment that Vicarious Visions really popped, proving itself as a developer capable of making acclaimed triple-A games that sold like gangbusters. And Activision Blizzard thanked it for its work by reducing it to a faceless support studio. In an industry known for short-sighted moves, Activision-Blizzard wears the crown (or, at least,shares it with parent company Microsoft).
Activision Blizzard Only Wants One Kind Of Game, And It Isn’t Crash Bandicoot
That’s because, more than any other publisher, Activision Blizzard is only interested in making one kind of game: the kind that could be monetized forever.Call of Duty, its world-conquering FPS series that brings in giant profits with each new release, is one half of the template.World of Warcraft, which has earned steady money year after year since its launch two decades ago is the other.
THPS 1+2 and Crash 1-3 made profits, but they were thewrong kind of profits. Crash Bandicoot couldn’t support a subscription service. The Tony Hawk games had been yearly releases in the aughts, but weren’t a big enough draw to support that kind of model in the current era. These were games that could be sold once and enjoyed, not milked forever.
The games industry is suffering from the same problem as the film industry, where big movies have to have huge budgets in hopes of reaping huge profits. That resulted in several high-profile bombs last year, like The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and The Marvels. In games, it’s not all that different, with publishers going all-in on the biggest, most expensive, most (potentially) lucrative, most (hopefully) long-running games at the expense of all others. Even within that framework, Activision Blizzard’s focus is uniquely narrow. A studio that made real,quantifiablehits on its own is more valuable as a support studio for another game that could exist without it.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy sold well once, but once wasn’t good enough. Even if it did sell once… to 20 million people.
