Sony needs to catch up on nostalgia, while Microsoft buys it up for billions

techradar.com:

The announcement of Microsoft agreeing to buy Activision-Blizzard in a $68 billion dollar deal shook the gaming industry, with many wondering what’s going to happen once the deal closes.

This means that brands such as Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and True Crime: Streets of LA are about to be the property of Microsoft, alongside other brands such as DOOM, Elder Scrolls, Halo, and more.

But this brings up the aspect of where Sony stands in this. With a rumored service called Project Spartacus offering titles from its back catalog of almost 30 years, there are going to be franchises, such as Crash Bandicoot, which will need more discussion for them to be allowed on the service.

However, this is also representative of how far behind Sony looks in the light of Microsoft’s big news, and what it could mean for future generations of consoles and gaming as a whole.

When the Nintendo Online Expansion Pack service was announced in October, Nintendo surprised many by confirming that Microsoft-owned Banjo Kazooie was about to arrive on the service, now available to play on the Switch.

In retrospect, it wasn’t a surprise, mainly due to the starring titular characters Banjo and Kazooie appearing in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as paid DLC, back in 2019.

Also, to see the first game in the series, on the Nintendo Online Service with a ‘by Xbox Game Studios’, will cause anyone older than 20 years old to do a double-take. Especially with the Rare logo appearing once you start up the game. But it shows how far some brands have come since their first outing on other systems.

Yet Sony is already on the backfoot. It didn’t help matters when the CEO, Jim Ryan, publicly called out its older catalog as ‘dated’ and questioned why anyone would play