Once upon a time,Crash Bandicootwas the all-star PlayStation mascot, solidifying Naughty Dog as one of the console’s most iconic developers. It paved the road forJak and Daxter,Uncharted, andThe Last of Us. But these days, it’s paving roads to the Call of Duty factories and live-service spin-off mills. That’s whereCrash Team Rumblecomes in. It was panned by critics and audiences alike, and its struggle to keep the attention of gamers and Crash fans can be summed up by its Twitch audience of 24 viewers.As of writing, those viewers are split between ten different streams, with the lowest count being one viewer and the highest eight. “are you ready to RUMBLE?!” streamer colinreid asks, to which the diluted audience of under 30 measly replies, “I guess.” One streamer is even making the journey to get the Platinum, because Crash fans are nothing if not dedicated completionists.RELATED:Crash Team Rumble Is A Dud But Good Lord Does It ShmoveThis unfortunately low turnout was first spotted byCrashy News, a site dedicated to all things Bandicoot. At the time of its reporting, the game was sitting at around 30 viewers, but it has dipped as low as 12. Games with more viewers right now include Crash Team Racing, Black Ops 4, Tomb Raider Level Editor, MultiVersus (somehow,despite its shutdown), and Gollum. Even Duolingo is higher.Of course, Twitch viewers don’t represent how many people are playing or have bought a game. Crash Team Rumble no doubt has well over 20 players. However, one of the most popular tweets about the game,with 27,000 likes and 2.3 million views,simply asked, “How aware are you that a new Crash Bandicoot game has been available for 4 days”. A lot of the comments echo the same sentiment of ‘I had no idea’. “Yeah had no idea this was even out yet,” one user replied. “They are doing a terrible job at marketing this.” “I thought it was coming out in July,” another added. Others were even confused about the genre, whether it was a MOBA or a competitive platformer. The price tag also came up, as some expected it to be free-to-play while others chose not to bother since they assumed it would be $70, only just finding out that it’s $30.
In our review, we said that “If you love Crash Bandicoot and you’ve been waiting years for what once was Wumpa League, there’s probably just enough there to convince you that this is a good game. But it’s not. It’s a bad game. They shouldn’t have made Crash Bandicoot into this thing, and deep down all of us know it.”
