I\'m tired of threads and posts begging Insomniac to make another Spyro or saying they hope one day Insomniac will. They won\'t. Read on...
Developers never own IP\'s (intellectual properties... like Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank.)
Publishers own them. Right now, Ratchet & Clank is owned by Sony. Sony can pick a developer, any developer they want, to develop Ratchet and Clank games. In fact, they had another developer work on \'Size Matters\'. They will most likely stick with Insomniac for the main series for as long as they can because they know Insomniac makes fantastic games that sell well.
Right now Sierra owns Spyro. Sierra chooses developers to work with the Spyro IP. Even though Insomniac created the Spyro IP they don\'t have ownership to it.
Insomniac Games created and developed the first three Spyro games (Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto\'s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon), and all others were created by developers chosen by Universal, as they own the license to Spyro.
You all think Incomniac sold the rights which is wrong. The issue was that they never owned the rights to begin with, which means that they will probably NEVER make another Spyro game.
Insomniac never owned the rights to Spyro... Universal Vivendi has always owned rights to Distruptor and Spyro... They are Universal titles... Insomniac never owned them, Insomniac just developed them, Universal had full rights to them.
Universal didn\'t publish it... at the time, Insomniac worked under Universal - you can actually say Insomniac was just a team at Universal (just as Blizzard North was at Blizzard) Sony really published the game.
Here is Insomniac\'s most recent comments on Spyro (said August 31st, 2007):
Interviewer: "Here\'s a reader question: Do you regret letting the Spyro franchise go? The games have been ... different since it left Insomniac."
James Stevenson, community relations manager for Insomniac Games: "I don\'t think so. We made the games, and that was it. Ratchet and Clank is another character-based series that we love. There\'s no regret. We\'ve moved on to other projects, and Universal still owns the property."
Interviewer: "Another reader wanted to know if you guys feel tied down by Ratchet and Clank ? You guys just released a new IP ..."
Stevenson: "Yeah, we just released Resistance , so we don\'t feel pressured to pump out Ratchet games. If we didn\'t want to make Ratchet and Clank games, we wouldn\'t make Ratchet and Clank games. We really enjoyed making Tools of Destruction . We got to push the story and the animation and really bring the world to life in ways we couldn\'t on the PS2."
As you can see once their 3-game contract with Universal expired they moved on and didn\'t look back. They still haven\'t. They never will.
Publishers want rights over the IP because they do not want to risk losing it if the IP becomes valuable. Sony did not have the IP rights over Spyro, Universal did and when their 3 games were finished, the Insomniac developers walked away from Spyro, leaving the cute dragon platformer to the cutting boards of anyone else Universal chose. It\'s obvious why publishers (or anyone really) wants to own IP.
Ted Price, President of Insomniac felt Spyro\'s move arsenal was running dry so when it came time to pass him on they didn\'t hesitate. They said they couldn\'t think of any more Spyro could do and so they felt Ratchet was more versatile with his move set and would be better to develop.
Ted Price has always bashed post-Insomniac Spyro games. This is taken from Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine:
"When Ted Price, who helmed all three Ratchet & Clank games, was talking with us last March, another one of his creations, Spyro, came up. Price didnt mince any words, saying, Spyro has become an abused stepchild. While Digital Eclipse did a great job on the GBA titles, Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly on PS2 and GameCube was an absolute travesty. When it was released, I was polite about it when people asked, having not played the game. But then I played it. It seems to me at this point that consumers are going to think twice before they buy another Spyro game?. Whats worse for us at Insomniac is that a lot of people assume we made Enter the Dragonfly."
Ouch, seems he has no problem bashing their IP Spyro.
Here is their official comment on their relationship with publishers taken from Ted Price\'s blog.
Has Sony been the only publisher you\'ve worked with? Are you truly independent?
"Disruptor was published by Universal Interactive Studios. Spyro the Dragon, Spyro: Ripto\'s Rage and Spyro: Year of the Dragon were marketed and distributed by Sony but Universal was officially our publisher on the deal and retained the rights to the IP. It wasn\'t until Ratchet & Clank on PS2 that we had a direct developer/publisher relationship with Sony even though we had been working with them since around 1996. As I state above, being independent means that you always have the option to go to another publisher if things don\'t work out. But working directly with Sony has been great and there has been no reason for us to go elsewhere since we began "officially" working with them in 2000. We have an incredible amount of freedom in terms of what we develop and how we do it - Sony has never tried to force our hand creatively. Plus I don\'t envy those who are constantly changing publishers - it\'s a lot of work and takes time away from making great games. We\'re fortunate to have an excellent relationship with our current publisher and very fair deals, so why throw that out the window?"
Did Sony ever approach Insomniac for acquisition?
"Nope. Not once. Not twice. I don\'t know where that rumor started."
Why doesnt Sony buy Insomniac?
"A) We\'re not interested in selling, B) they\'re probably not interested in buying and C) if it ain\'t broke, don\'t fix it! As you pointed out there is a lot of trust between the two companies - we definitely have an "old school" way of doing business together and it works well."
The bottom line is this:
Insomniac created the Spyro IP but never owned it. As soon as they developed it Universal owned it and Sony published it. Once the three-game-agreement that had been made with Insomniac was fulfilled they moved onto the PS2 with Ratchet & Clank. Seeing a lucrative oppurtunity Universal decided to hand IP development rights to another company and publish the game through Vivendi not Sony so that it could appear on multiple systems and make more money. Insomniac has said they did what they only ever planned to do with Spyro and have no regrets that its done, they had fun but they are letting the past be the past. Now they are interested in Resistance: Fall of Man and Ratchet & Clank. Never again will Spyro be on their menu unless they choose so (and they\'ve made it clear they probably never will) and Sierra agrees to it, or Sierra asks them (which we can all highly doubt they will) and Insomniac accepts. Stop making useless posts like "PLZ Insomniac, take bak Spyro!!!1!". Its trite and pointless. They aren\'t taking Spyro back you can count on it so stop having pipe dreams that they might and just accept that Sierra/Universal chooses who will develop the games and they are a business, they are in it for money not quality. They know Spyro is lucrative and so they pass it to whoever can make it look like they are trying (which I don\'t think they are) and still rake in mounds of cash.
Insomniac Spyro is dead. Accept that and please, for all of us, move on!
-Neal, Sierra Boards
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Originally Posted by Livi70590
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