While only being available on Sony’s PlayStation 4 console, it appears that the successful remake of the Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy looked set to be announced for the Nintendo Switch soon.
News of a leak arrived today, which appeared to be confirming that Crash would be arriving as a new Nintendo Switch game to help plump up the current lineup of titles.
The source of the story was an unusual one, with review codes site Keymailer reportedly listing it as an upcoming Switch game.
However, since this was first noticed, more information on the apparent leak has surfaced and it could prove pretty disappointing.
The co-founder of keymailer – a site used by YouTube and Twitch content creators – posted an explanation on why this surfaced in the first place.
“Hey guys. Keymailer co-founder here,” he posted on Reddit.
“This was news to me when I saw this thread. I reached out to the management team and apparently this is, sadly, an error on our side.
“The game was incorrectly tagged when we imported the upcoming releases.
“Apologies on behalf of the company for any disappointment on this, as a Switch owner and a fan of Crash Bandicoot, I would have been as excited to play this.”
While it’s sad to see this rumour boil down to a simple mistake, it doesn’t mean something won’t be announced in the future.
A recent listing on the website of Hungarian retailer SuperGamer suggests that Crash Bandicoot N Sane Trilogy will get an Xbox One release on December 8.
That’s roughly six months after the launch of the PS4 version, and means the N Sane Trilogy would be in shops for Christmas.
Interestingly, the listing also features Xbox One box art, which further suggests that it could be legitimate.
More recently, images were discovered that appeared to show the menu screen with Xbox One button commands.
While no recent listings have been found for the popular remaster appearing on Nintendo Switch, there doesn’t appear to be anything stopping it happening.
While the trilogy is only currently available on PS4, it isn’t an exclusive and means it can be ported to other consoles sometime in the future.
The Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy sold very well on the PS4 and even caught Activision off-guard by its popularity.
Admitting that the company had no idea how successful the N Sane Trilogy would be, Hirshberg commented at the time: “It’s hard to tell whether that’s a vocal minority or whether that’s a real mass audience until you put something out there.
“And Crash has surpassed all of our expectations by a pretty wide margin.”
“So this is a strategy that clearly has our attention, and while there are no new announcements today, I think you can be confident that there will be more activity like this in the future with more great IP.
“The other opportunity beyond remaster is to look at some of our classic IP and ask whether or not it could be reborn on a new platform like what we’re going with Skylanders on mobile.”