Vicarious Visions has now merged with Blizzard Entertainment

Acitivision has announced that Vicarious Visions will now be merged into Blizzard Entertainment. All 200 employees will now be working on Blizzard titles and franchises; nobody knows if it will be an existing Blizzard IP or something new yet. The reason behind this was for long-term support. They have also declined to comment on what they're working on next, or for how long.

Vicarious Visions is known for their contributions to Crash Bandicoot, Guitar Hero, and Skylanders. Their last game as a non-Blizzard developer, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, was met with raving reviews. The studio will remain active in their location at Albany, New York.

Author's Note: I'm still holding out hope for more THPS games, but I am curious to see what Vicarious Visions will be working on next. Even if it's nothing for Nintendo platforms, the Wii owes a great deal of thanks to VV for porting over many of the beloved Guitar Hero games to the console. Whatever is next, I'm hoping that it'll be good. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!

 

Gets his chance to be in another cartoon dashed
His mobile game keeps getting delayed
Now this

But Crash has definitely has a chance you guys! Activision won't mess it up! s/

 

But Crash has definitely has a chance you guys! Activision won't mess it up! s/

I mean...characters were already decided as of November 2019, so I doubt this affects his chances.

 

My first thought about this; Will it affect anything dealing with WoW?

Cuz that's all I really care about from Blizzard. IDK much about VV, but if they're good and able to help breath some new life into WoW then i'm all for it.

 

I honestly thought Vicarious Visions was already owned by Blizzard/Activision.

 

Activision truly sucks.

 

I honestly thought Vicarious Visions was already owned by Blizzard/Activision.

They were
This is them now being merged into Blizzard so in essence, they no longer exist as Vicarious Visions but as another team at Blizzard

 

Crash is Dead Again

 

Crash is Dead Again

Vicarious Visions may have been the ones that revived Crash Bandicoot with N.Sane Trilogy, But developer Toys for Bob did "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time" and Beenox handled "Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled"

While It sucks that Crash Bandicoot has lost long time studio Vicarious Visions, But judging from the work that Toys for Bob did with "Crash 4" and "Spyro Reignited Trilogy", I'm confident their very more than capable of carrying both franchises moving forward.

 

Vicarious Visions may have been the ones that revived Crash Bandicoot with N.Sane Trilogy, But developer Toys for Bob did "Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time" and Beenox handled "Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled"

While It sucks that Crash Bandicoot has lost long time studio Vicarious Visions, But judging from the work that Toys for Bob did with "Crash 4" and "Spyro Reignited Trilogy", I'm confident their very more than capable of carrying both franchises moving forward.

I can’t see Activision make another Crash game for a while Crash 4 didn’t sale as good as expected

 

I can’t see Activision make another Crash game for a while Crash 4 didn’t sale as good as expected

The game has only been out a for just a few months and it was pretty obvious it wasn't gonna reach ,"N.Sane Trilogy" sales as that game was riding on Nostalgia and a $40 price tag for 3 games vs $60 for 1.

In the long run it should do fine, Am I expecting double digits sales like "N.Sane Trilogy"? No, But I still expect it to do at least a couple/few million at least or several at best. Which is still pretty impressive considering most platformers not named Mario/Nintendo don't reach those levels Not to mention it's very likely to get ported to the Switch which Crash does well on Nintendo consoles and demographic which should boost sales.

While Call of Duty is still Activision's biggest franchise, It has rebuilt Crash Bandicoot as one of it's flagships and likely still have plans for the series going forward.

 

I honestly thought Vicarious Visions was already owned by Blizzard/Activision.

They were owned by Activision, not Blizzard. Now it's the other way around.

Activision and Blizzard are separate companies that act as subsidaries of Activision-Blizzard (it's more confusing than it has any right to be, but whatever), so the fact that VV was an Activision subsidary didn't automatically mean it was one for Blizzard as well.

If anything, it shows the Activision and Blizzard don't work together despite the merge, so maybe now all the people who gatekeeped Crash because Blizzard ****ed up in late 2019 will finally shut up now, since it's pretty obvious now that what one company does wouldn't necessarily reflect on the other.