Microsoft's Activision Acquisition Gives Xbox Control Over Two Classic PlayStation Franchises

gamerant.com:

Microsoft has confirmed its intention to acquire Activision Blizzard for nearly $70 billion, which will in turn bring the massive company and its studios under the Xbox umbrella. The finer details of what this deal will mean for the gaming industry at large have yet to be revealed. For example, it's unclear if the Call of Duty games and other Activision titles will become Xbox console exclusives, but regardless, Xbox will have control over some of the world's biggest franchises.

Not only will the Microsoft Activision acquisition give Xbox control over franchises like Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, and Warcraft, but it will also give it control over two franchises that were once married to the PlayStation brand. While it's been decades since they were PlayStation exclusives, there's no denying that Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon are forever linked to the PS1, and so it's notable that they will soon be Xbox-owned.

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The original Crash Bandicoot trilogy was developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony, and the same holds true for Crash Team Racing as well. The party game Crash Bash had a different developer, but it was also published by Sony, making all the games PlayStation 1 exclusives in the process. Sony even went as far as to push Crash Bandicoot as the PS1's mascot for a time, positioning the character as a rival to Nintendo's Mario and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog.

However, Sony didn't outright own the rights to the Crash Bandicoot games. Universal Interactive did, with the Crash Bandicoot games only being PlayStation exclusives through a deal that was forged between the two companies. Once that deal was up, Universal