Toys for Bob free themselves from Activision and Microsoft to go indie

Sometimes I look at a studio, knowing full well that they’re part of a bigger corporation, and think that they’d thrive so much more if they were independent. Toys for Bob immediately comes to mind as one of those studios. Good news, for those that have had the same idea: Toys for Bob has officially announced they’re breaking away from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to go indie.

Over the past few years, Toys for Bob has been used and abused by Activision Blizzard. Gutting the studio, Activision utilized them as support for other properties (such as Call of Duty) rather than their bread and butter like Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. Skylanders is but a distant memory of flea market bin toys anymore.

What is Toys for Bob?

If you’re unfamiliar with Toys for Bob, you’d be delighted to know they were the ones who cooked up the entire Skylanders franchise and went all-in on the Spyro: Reignited Trilogy, as well as developing Crash 4: It’s About Time. But, the company has actually been around since 1989, starting with the Space War-esque Star Control in 1990.

Today, the Toys for Bob studio heads Paul Yan and Avery Lodato officially announced their independence from Microsoft, who recently acquired Activision Blizzard. Effective immediately, Toys for Bob is free to do as they please.

Based on their blog post on the official Toys for Bob website, it seems that the studio will still be working closely with Microsoft and Activision and the Xbox maker is “extremely supportive”. This likely means that Microsoft will potentially look to Toys for Bob to help with future Spyro or Crash games, which the fans are not going to be mad about.

Speculating, it’s always a possibility that now that they can spread their wings a bit, they can create their own IPs, possibly in homage to games like Spyro or Skylanders. It’s also plausible that they could look into a spiritual successor or sequel to their first game series, Star Control.

In any case, the blog post is incredibly positive and we at Comfy Cozy Gaming wish them the best… and for more Spyro and Spyro-like games.

While you’re here, if you enjoy adventure games, Pokemon is always a good idea. If you haven’t heard yet, Pokemon Legends: Z-A was announced earlier this week as well. It looks awesome.