Toys for Bob breaks from Activision/Xbox, going independent

Good! This industry needs to cool down on the buyouts.

I never understood wtf were their reason to even exist. Do they develop adult toys for Bobby Kotick, and now that he left, they follow him, or something?

So glad they got to break free from Activision and hopefully, they partner with MS to make Banjo/Kazooie games if possible. And with everything that is happening with AAA companies, it is not surprising that Toys for Bob prefer to be independent studio.

@hardwenzen: They do partnerships with Activision/Call of Duty on a number of occasions. Also they make Spyro games and I don't want to see a proper Spyro 4 moving forward.

Wait they're the one who made the original Spyro titles?

Good news indeed.

Wish them well. Would still like to see them work on a Banjo-Kazooie game in some way.

Nice! I hope more of these smaller studios go independent.

I hope they do well on their own now.

Toys for Bob are behind Spyro, Crash, and Skylanders. Crazy to see the industry starting to fracture when in the end all will be more unified. This is the way forward though... these companies need to spend less and release more.

I'll give them 2yrs max and they will fold or go back to MS. Don't get me wrong as i'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it is kinda weird, and MS must have been happy to let them go rather than closing them or letting people go.

More developers need to do this.

Look at arrowhead games, small studio but they delivered a massive succes. Valve is bigger than ever breaking free of Sierra, etc.

We need less AAA and AAAA and more indie and low budget games.

@R4gn4r0k: "We need less AAA and AAAA and more indie and low budget games"

Do we really? We need more AA games, Indies and low budget are EVERYWHERE now. I was looking at the new games section on the Xbox marketplace the other day and the majority of it is Indies trash. The only AAA game I saw on the first few pages was Skull and Bones.

There is far too much Indies and low (extremely low) budget stuff being released.

So much so MS need to add a AA, AAA, Indies and low budget tabs to the side bar to easily filter out the crap.

Allow me to filter out the AAA and AAAA crap like Suicide Squad and Skull and bones so I can focus on low budget or small team size games like Helldivers and Banishers instead.

Me too.

Hope this turns out well for them. They are too good to just be a CoD support studio.

After Kotick threw them into the CoD slave pit, I'm happy for their newfound freedom.

Best of luck.

@R4gn4r0k: My point is that gaming is infested by Indies and low budget games these days, not sure why you would want even more of them.

Yes a filter so each person can find what they like/want would be great.

Me personally I would like more AA games, I spent most of my gaming time last year to AA games like Remnant 2 & Atlas Fallen, and Indies, and some low budget garbage. I can't even remember if I played a single AAA game last year.

AAA games like SS and S&B can bugger off, I'm more for single player or co-op AAA games that can have a mp portion of the game so long as it's a full campaign. Live service can piss off as far as I'm concerned.

I get that you wanna see more heavyweight titles but Indie games and the likes such as remakes to remasters are all fillers until AAA titles start releasing. Development has taken a toll and are getting ridiculously long to make. That's why Indie, low-key budget games take up the spot until AAA comes out.

If you want SP AAA games, there's always Star Wars Jedi Survivor as that's a great SP game...unless you hate Star Wars that is🤭

And for the record, Suicide Squad & Skull & Bones can go elsewhere, I too want to see more AA get their shine on.

@davillain: I would just like a good mix, right now (at least what I'm seeing on the marketplace) is that there are way too many indies/low budget games that they drown out everything else.

I'm happy to just play a half a dozen AAA games a year and same goes for AA, and sprinkle in some Indies.

I mostly don't buy remakes/remasters. I feel it's just a cash grab for the most part.

Haven't you noticed a lot of Indies have been made in the past 5yrs?

As for Star Wars, yeah not my thing. Tried to play the first one, only lasted 2 missions because the game doesn't allow you to skip cutscenes, and I said nope.

So much for Banjo game made by Toys for Bob lmao.

But since ActiBliz allowed them to go maybe this was a pet project by senior managements and they will still have close connection with ActiBliz like how Nintendo/Playstation have strong connection with their 2nd party studios owned by ex staffs.

Personally I think it's a good thing, if it allows the studio to be more nimble, and create games without all the bureaucracy, and union stuff. I hope MS does contract out some work to them for games they're familiar with, like and spyro, which will probably be a multiplat title if it ever gets made, and generate enough revenue that way to support itself.

So, after reading the statement it seems (from the outside looking in) that MS will have some sort of exclusivity deals.

"To make this even more exciting, we're exploring the possibility of a new partnership between our new studio and MS"

Hope for the best for them!!

No, they did the Spyro Reignited Trilogy remasters, then Crash 4, then recently Crash Team Rumble which is getting its last update next week.

Matt Booty mentioned something about devs having an out clause if they wanted to split from MS in a podcast once. I don't know what the circumstances of it were, but it sounds like TFB is exercising it. Probably sure working on an upcoming MS IP might be a stipulation of it.

Meh. But i guess they could do a Banjo remake, and it has potential to be great.

@davillain: my no. 1 issue is that big sites and influencers only shine a light on big budget AAA games. And the occasional AA game that happens to be hot at the moment.

I really wish sites like IGN and Gamespot would help people understand better which indie and low budget games are great and what kind of person they cater too.

Eurogamer does this a lot but as for other big websites? Big YouTubers? This is really lacking I feel.

Gamespot is the worst for not reviewing smaller budget/indie games.

They never reviewed games from 2023 such as Trepang2, Turbo Overkill, and the System Shock remake.

To answer your original question though Insomniac Games is who developed the original Spyro The Dragon Trilogy. Before that they did Disruptor for PS1. After they did Ratchet and Clank, Resistance, Sunset Overdrive, now Spider-Man.

This is what I mean. It's frankly unforgivable to not cover three of the best games of the year.

Gamespot has a responsibility beyond writing three hundred COD and Overwatch articles.