roadkillers said:
Okay, not purchasing Naughty Dog before they sold Crash Bandicoot |
Naughty Dog didn't own the IP either, so purchasing ND at any point wouldn't make a difference for Sony.
The IP was owned by Universal Interactive Studios as Mark Cerny was heading the Universal's gaming division at that time. He approached ND and Insomniac (plus two other indie companies which turned out fruitless) to develop games for Universal.
Therefore, Crash and Spyro IPs were owned by Universal Interactive Studios, while they were developed by ND and Insomniac Games, respectively. Sony's involvement during that period was mostly funding and marketing the games.
Interestingly enough, Activision had nothing to do with those games, so here's the chronology of Crash's fate from that point forward...
- Vivendi bought Universal's gaming division
- Vivendi later purchased the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment & Sierra Entertainment
- Universal's IPs (Crash, Spyro, etc) were combined with Sierra's under Vivendi Games
- Activision merges with Vivendi's gaming arm, forming Activsion Blizzard
- In the merger, Vivendi put the entire Universal, and Sierra's IPs under Activision
- Vivendo was the majority shareholder of Activision Blizzard
- Parent company of Vivendi's gaming division started to struggle financially
- Activision Blizzard's investors decided to buyback their shares from Vivendi and make themselves independent
- Crash IP has now moved from a Universal Interactive Studios IP which's developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony, all the way to an IP owned completely by Activation
