Crash Bandicoot artist claims a fifth game was cancelled

A former Toys For Bob artist has claimed that a fifth Crash Bandicoot game was cancelled at the studio.

Concept artist Nicholas Kole made the claim in an X thread this weekend, in which they shared news that a separate project they’d been working on with another studio, ‘Project Dragon’, had been cancelled.

Responding to fans speculating that the project could be related to Spyro, due to its codename, Kole said that it was not, but claimed that a version of Crash 5 had been cancelled.

“It is not Spyro, but some day folks will hear about the Crash 5 that never was, and it’s gonna break hearts,” they wrote.

In another reply, Kole claimed that Project Dragon and Crash 5 were “two totally separate cancelled projects at two different studios”.

Crash Bandicoot developer Toys For Bob split from Activision this year following Microsoft’s acquisition of the Call of Duty publisher. The studio later revealed it has signed a publishing agreement with Microsoft for its next game.

The last Crash Bandicoot game, It’s About Time, released in 2020 and was well received by critics. According to the LinkedIn profile of a developer, the game went on to sell more than five million copies.

After Crash 4, Toys For Bob, which also developed the Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy, had partially transitioned into a support studio for Call of Duty, specifically the massively successful free-to-play Warzone.

Online team-based platformer Crash Team Rumble launched last summer, but support was ended for the title in March of this year.