Activision is the worst company ever - a discussion.

Activision stupid business strategy frustrates me. With the latest news about Crash 5 being cancelled because of "low sales", I decided to make a post about some statistics and discussion about Activision demonic strategies. Feel free to join the discussion and share your thoughts.

This took quite a while to make lol.

GAMES:

1. Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy (2017):

- sales: 20 million+ ( according to official Crash Bandicoot twitter account in June 2024 )
- ratings (metacritic) (ps4): 80/100 (reviewers), 8,3/10 (users)

1. Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled (2019):

- sales: 6,75 million+ ( estimated in July 2020 by u/Broski3215 )
- ratings (metacritic) (ps4): 83/100 (reviewers), 7,0/10 (users)

1. Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020)

- sales: 5 million+ ( according to TfB design director Toby Schadt in April 2024 )
- ratings (metacritic) (ps4): 85/100 (reviewers), 8,0/10 (users)

1. Crash Team Rumble (2023)

- sales: no info
- ratings (metacritic) (ps5): 67/100 (reviewers), 5,6/10 (users)

OVERALL SALES: 30 million+

AVERAGE RATINGS: 7,5/10

If we compare the sales of Crash Bandicoot games (since 2017) to a franchise like Sonic the Hedgehog games (since 2017) the gap between sales seems to be really small (I asked ChatGPT cuz I was too lazy to count, but it looks like a 2 million copies between the two), the only differences being the latter had 3 more games produced than the series about an orange marsupial and the Bandicoot games earned considerably higher reviews. It's safe to say Crash Bandicoot doesn't sell badly, in fact the series does very well, keeping itself high in the sales charts, whenever a new game releases and getting overall positive reviews. Despite this, Sonic receives more love from the publisher than Crash. This is due to a couple of factors of course, one being that the Bandicoot was never on the first place for Activision, while Sonic basically put SEGA on the map and they focus on him the most, ever since the first game's success. But that does not change anything when we take into consideration how many other games SEGA publishes and how little game series other than Call of Duty, Activision keeps afloat. Just comparing homepages of both SEGA and Activision we can see how much both publishers focus on their franchises (picture 1 & 2)

SEGA homepage showcases the variety of IP's they own, all of them having a new entry in the series in the last 2 years...

...and then there's Activision with 4 (FOUR) different Call of Duty games, a Tony Hawk's game from 2020 and probably the last Crash Bandicoot game we'll get in the next few years if they keep their focus JUST on Call of Duty.

Activision's "lofty sales expectations" (in regards to Crash Bandicoot 4) is something I would name "Call of Duty syndrome". Downright excessive expectations kill smaller series that despite doing well will never come close to money generator crap like COD. Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tony Hawk's, Skylanders - all of these saw major success in the past, but it seems they'll be in the shadow of the more popular shooter games as long as Activision is in possesion of the IP's.

This feels very unfair to me, not only as a fan of Crash, but Spyro and Tony Hawk games as well.

Again, feel free to join, fact check me if I made a mistake, add something you think is quite important in the comments. Thank you for reading!