It’s sad, but unfortunately it sounds plausible: Crash Bandicoot 5 was in development, but the project was canceled for the typical reason.

In the video embedded below, you can hear that Toys For Bob had ideas for Crash Bandicoot 5 (hinted at in the few seconds of Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time’s final ending), but it was ultimately canceled by publisher Activision because the company didn’t want to fund single-player titles in order to focus on Live Service titles.

In the video, Liam Robertson, a ludologist (video game historian), talks about how after Toys For Bob finished the Spyro Reignited trilogy, the team started working on a multiplayer Crash project before taking the work and experience from that project and applying it to a new single-player episode. This eventually led to Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. After this was released, a small part of the team was given the challenge of brainstorming a sequel. This was called Crash Bandicoot 5 within the studio, and was to be a single-player 3D platformer that would pick up directly from the events of the fourth episode (the story was already a given).

In the video, several alleged concept art appear alongside the proposed story concepts, and a school was to be the centerpiece. There would have been evil apprentices, and some of the villainous characters from previous episodes would have appeared in the game. One suggestion was that Crash and Spyro would have teamed up (perhaps with better quality than on the GBA…), as an inter-dimensional threat would have threatened them both. Both characters would have been playable.

Once again, the project had to be scrapped due to publisher greed, as Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time failed to meet its sales targets. This meant that Crash Bandicoot 5 ended up in the same place as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4: the dustbin. Too bad!

Source: VGC