Activision Names the Team Behind Its Crash and Spyro Revivals

Activision has put a name to the group behind its Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and Tony Hawk revivals. In a two-page feature in Xbox’s new XBOX – The 25th Anniversary Magazine, Activision’s Valerie Lee introduces Emerging Franchises, a small internal team that decides which of the publisher’s older series come back, and how.

Emerging Franchises is an Activision team formed around 2016 to revive, extend and launch franchises outside Call of Duty. According to the feature, it grew out of the success of character crossovers in Skylanders, which convinced Activision that fans still cared about its classic characters.

Three pillars, one goal

The magazine splits the team’s work into three groups:

The turning point, the feature says, was the 2016 reveal of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy. Michelle Bresaw, who led the team then and is now Activision’s vice president of live services for Call of Duty, recalls the crowd’s reaction as “one of those incredible moments where you could physically feel what a game meant to people.”

Sekiro was part of it too

The least expected name on the list is Sekiro. Activision published FromSoftware’s 2019 action game, and the feature credits Emerging Franchises with helping “support another team’s ideas to become a truly blockbuster proposition.” Sekiro sold more than two million copies in its first 10 days and won Game of the Year at The Game Awards, which the magazine calls Activision’s first win in that category.

What’s next: Spyro and Elsewhere

The forward-looking part is short. The feature points to Spyro: A Realm Beyond, which Toys for Bob revealed at the June Xbox Games Showcase for spring 2027 on Xbox Series X|S, PC, PS5 and Switch 2, with Game Pass on day one. It is the first completely original Spyro game since 2008 and adds free flight. The feature also names Elsewhere Entertainment, Activision’s studio working on a new narrative-driven AAA franchise.

No new Crash or Tony Hawk game is announced. The piece closes by saying some upcoming projects “will return us to familiar worlds” while others are “still waiting to be discovered.”

The feature is a team profile, not an announcement, but it says something useful about how Activision runs its back catalog. Spyro: A Realm Beyond is developed by Toys for Bob, which left Activision to go independent in 2024, yet Activision still publishes it and Emerging Franchises still claims it. That suggests the team works as a publishing and brand group that can partner with outside studios, the same model it used with FromSoftware on Sekiro. For fans hoping for a new Crash, that is the more encouraging read: the team doesn’t need an in-house studio to bring a series back.

The same magazine also carries Xbox’s long feature on its next console, which we broke down in every detail Xbox has confirmed about Project Helix. Our Xbox 25th anniversary roundup covers the rest of this week’s news.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report