PlayStation still needs a mascot - Crash and Spyro are perfectI'm not sure if you've noticed, but recognizable imagery kind of holds a lot of power in today's world. Let's pretend Xbox isn't greatly incentivized to never let this particular IP trade happen and explore exactly why Sony should be fighting tooth and nail for for Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon - not Call of Duty. In fact, just for a moment, let's leave most of our real-world business sense at the door and just think it out.
That said, even if the end goal for Sony was just to someday have a conversation about purchasing the Crash and Spyro IP from Microsoft, I think the PlayStation team should have gone all in with that direction. Microsoft's deal with Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation was, in my view, merely a PR token for both parties - not something that merited any real trading value. As valuable as 10 years of Call of Duty support sounds for any platform, I think it's pretty evident from a year's worth of back-and-forth that Microsoft needs to keep the franchise multi-platform for the foreseeable future anyway. Look, I'm under no illusion here - this bartering tactic would never actually work.
