Why doesn't Sony use their Cat Mascot (Toro) in the West?

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Rath said:

Silver-Tiger said:

Rath said:

It's kind of weird that Sony doesn't have a mascot in the west. Crash was cool until he got screwed over by bad games. Spyro would also have made a good mascot, but the same thing happened to him.

I mean, Nintendo has three big mascots (Mario, Pikachu and Link), MS has one (Master Chief) but Sony seems to be lacking in any instantly recognizable character. I suppose the closest they have is Kratos?

They had quite a lot actually, but lost most of them to multiplatforms. Lara Croft, Solid Snake etc.

But it's ok, PlayStation stands for variety, they don't need a central mascot like Nintendo or MS.

They do help to define a brand though.

When you say Disney people think Mickey, when you say Nintendo people think Mario, when you say Xbox people think Master Chief. When you say Playstation what do people think of? Nothing really jumps to mind for me.

 

Out of interest was there a reason why Sony lost Crash and Spyro? Did they own the brands or were they third party?

Sony never owned Crash and Spyro, they only owned Naughty Dog which is the developer of Crash, the real owners of these two are Universal Interactive, which is then merged with Activision , and after merging with Activision , they decided to dump Naughty Dog and Insomniac to release the games on multiple consoles instead of just one, then everything turned into shit.