Not impressed, and if one wants to revel in schadenfreude, I'm admittedly a
tad bit salty as well. That was some Square Einx FFVII tiers of baiting nonsense Sony pulled with that Crash "reveal" in their conference IMO. It wouldn't be so bad if there hadn't previously been two-three years of hints and teasers indicating something big was going to happen. -_-
The original trilogy (and no CTR for some reason...) being "remastered" "built from the ground up". Yeah no, can we not speak in vague terms like this? They could at least be honest about what it is, either it's an updated re-release or an straight remake--and if Sony/Activision didn't have or never planned to show anything about the "remasters" (in-development footage/screenshots, they didn't even name the developer working on it); then they never should had even featured that in the press conference at all IMO.
Maybe I'll be singing a happier tune when we see what the Crash "remasters" actually are, but until then I'll prefer being skeptical on how this turns out rather than positive.
It makes sense in a business standpoint if you're trying to reintroduce Crash to a new crowd.
I say citations, and context of said citations, are needed for this argument. I've seen this statement come up as to why certain IPs get remasters / remakes instead of / before new sequels, yet the reality seems to state a different effect in most cases.
The one case I can think of in which it does apply is the God of War Collection, which was released around the same time as GoW III in most territories. The collection itself managed to sell over 2 million, while the subsequent sequel made over 5 million.
On the other hand, the recent Nathan Drake Collection. Released six months prior to Uncharted 4, that game has seemingly not lit the sales charts on fire (for very long). Despite this, UC4 has sold well right out the gate with over 2 million copies.
And those are cases in which the studios/publishers actually were making a new sequel and decided to toss out a compilation of the previous games as well. The Sly Collection did not spark much consumer interest for the subsequent Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. Granted, that series historically has never been much of a seller (from what I can find, only the first game sold a million copies), but I think it applies (unless Sony was specifically aiming for a very low barometer of success for Thieves in Time).
Then we have cases where a new sequel is released without any prior compilation, and still manages to sell well regardless. DKC Returns sold over 5 million copies, even though that specific IP hadn't received anything in years. A similar scenario can also be said for NSMB on an more significant scale, albeit that was a handheld title when the preceding SMB games were on consoles. Listing these two in general might be unfair as they are Nintendo IPs rather than Sony IPs, but IMO the point still stands.
Checking sales of the all-time best selling games for consoles/handhelds, I've seen only a handful of notable remaster compilations of past games charting--and on the rare occasions they do, they are usually released after a new sequel, which greatly outperforms the compilation anyway (both the original and Wii re-release of Super Mario All-Stars apply here).
On a different note, I don't really agree with the notion that Crash IP needs to be re-introduced. The last Crash game in general (Nitro Kart 2 on mobile) was released in 2010, the last Crash console game (Mind Over Mutant) was in 2008. Even in the context of the "original" Crash games by Naughty Dog, they have been available on the PS3's PSN for years (2007/2008), so it's not like they have been long lost to time.
Crash definitely has been out of work for quite a while, but I don't think he's become sort of of relic that today's market wouldn't recognize with a new title, without having a prior recollection of the old games first (and in some cases as shown above with Nintendo's titles, even that isn't always necessary). Especially since during the series' prime, Crash could be said to have been the (un)official mascot for PlayStation as a whole.
