Toys for Bob says Spyro fans deserve the credit for Spyro: A Realm Beyond, over even them.
Studio head Paul Yan said this in an interview with GamesRadar:
Every year, every gaming event we hear the fanbase show up, like, ‘when is there going to be a new Spyro title?’ even before we had even pitched this.
When we came up to Xbox and said, listen, here’s our plan, we said, ‘look, there’s a community, it’s loud and consistent, they know what they want, you’re here to make this game, what else do you need, let’s get this thing going.
As we know, Toys for Bob also has unfinished business with Crash Bandicoot. While they signed up to work with Microsoft again after going independent, it would have been much easier for them to just start a new IP.
If you think about it, Bungie never pitched a new Halo game to Microsoft immediately after leaving them. This was a really unusual situation, and it only happened because of Spyro’s fandom.