Xbox Studios Loses: Toys for Bob (Crash Bandicoot) Goes Independent! | Xbox

The video game industry is certainly full of surprises. While the last few months have been marked by thousands of layoffs in the industry, Toys for Bob Studios has announced that it will regain its independence after being bought by Xbox.

It’s only been four months since Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King, but there’s already a buzz. The Toys for Bob studio, whose parent company is Activision Blizzard, announced today that, against all expectations, it wants to become independent again.

We are excited to announce that Toys for Bob is becoming an independent game development studio!

Over the years, we have inspired the child in every player with love, joy and laughter. We pioneered new intellectual property and hardware technology with Skylanders. We’ve raised the bar for remasters with Spyro Reignited Trilogy. We took Crash Bandicoot to new, innovative and critically acclaimed heights.

With that same enthusiasm and passion, we believe it’s time to take the studio and our future games to the next level. This opportunity allows us to return to our roots, namely a small and agile studio.

To make this news even more exciting, we are exploring partnership possibilities between our new studio and Microsoft. Although we are still in the early days of developing our next game and still far from any announcements, our team is eager to develop new stories, new characters and new gameplay experiences.

Our friends at Activision and Microsoft have been very supportive of our new direction, and we’re confident we’ll continue to work together as we move forward.

So, keep your horns in place and keep your eyes peeled for more news. Thanks to our gaming community for always supporting us throughout our journey. We look forward to sharing updates on our new venture as an independent studio!

Meet again!

The mention of “horns” at the end of the press release is apparently a big nod to the Spyro series and its famous dragons. How was this departure negotiated? What was Toys for Bob’s compensation for Microsoft to agree to become an independent studio? It’s impossible to say at the moment, but the “possibility of partnership” already suggests a certain continuity. In any case, Activision (and therefore Xbox) retains the rights to its proprietary licenses, including Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. You can find a list of Activision licenses and Xbox Studios in our dedicated folders.