Crash Bandicoot PS4 PlayStation 4 1

A curious consequence of Microsoft’s earth-shattering $70 billion buyout of Activision is that Xbox now owns legendary PlayStation franchises Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Sony made these games in collaboration with Universal Interactive back in the 90s, but that company was acquired by Vivendi which later merged with Activision to form Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft has now purchased Activision Blizzard – and all of its intellectual property and development teams – meaning that it’s to become the incumbent custodian of Crash and Spyro, assuming the acquisition closes. Many had hoped that Sony would, one day, wrangle the rights to the series back – but that looks impossible right now.

PlayStation had partnered with Activision Blizzard to secure timed exclusivity and marketing rights for recent entries in both series, which made sense given its historic association with the brands. While there’s been no comment from Microsoft about exclusivity as of yet, it seems safe to assume that it’ll handle the publisher the same way it has Bethesda, meaning the games will ultimately skip PlayStation in the end.

[source News: Microsoft Buys Call of Duty Publisher Activision Blizzard]