Can somebody explain how a company can just abandon their franchises like this?

[mjk45]

amak11 said:
Things cost $$$, you can't bring things back based on love.

In the case of Crash, Sony never owned them. Naughty Dog sold it and something else to Activision to escape bankruptcy. Sierra was bought out from Activision.... Thus, Spyro.

Nothing Rare worked on in it's own time was owned by Nintendo... hell Nintendo didnt even have a controlling stake, they did have a large stake in Rare. Microsoft bought out 100% of the company

Naughty dog never sold Crash , they  happened to rent space on Universal's lot , at the same time Universal created Universal interactive to enter the video game market with Mark Cerny at it's head .

Mark had  a large sum of money to get started but no games  so he approached his neighbour ND with the offer to finance a game but in return Universal would own the Ip , ND agreed and the game eventualy became Crash , Cerny did the same deal with Insomniac and Spyro who like ND where housed on the same lot.

It should be remembered that when Mark Cerny made the offer neither he or Naughty Dog had a concrete game idea in mind , he was just paying for product or in Universal Interactives case as a new entrant in the Video game field  a portfolio of IP's .

So the reality is Universal owned both Ip's before they where even made , Sony entered the picture a good while later when they saw the game at a trade show and came on board as publisher . later on they bought out ND the studio but Crash wasn't owned by Nd and Sony was faced with owning a studio who had in their own words done alll they could or wanted to with crash and a owner who didn't want to part with what at the time was it 's biggest seller.