A new leak posted to Reddit claims that a “huge port” of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is currently in development—allegedly by a small studio working under the Activision-Microsoft umbrella. If true, it will finally bring the game to PC, as well as natively to Xbox Series S/X, PS5 and Switch 2 with full cross-play.
According to the anonymous poster – who says they work at the studio tasked with porting the game – the project has been in the works for several months and is currently scheduled to release under the name Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled: Grand Prix Edition in early 2026. They even provided a couple of very fuzzy images, depicting a computer screen. The images seem to have been taken via phone rather than being direct screenshots, with one of them showing the new logo.
It’s very difficult to judge the new logo’s authenticity. Some aspects of it seem believable, such as the “n” in “grand prix edition” matching the styling of “n” in “racing”. However, the colouring and shadowing look a touch off, perhaps.
Activision does has a history of outsourcing ports and remasters. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy were both handled by external teams, and Iron Galaxy’s name has been thrown around before in relation to ports of older Activision titles, too.
That raises the question of which studio could have been tasked with porting the game. Iron Galaxy would have been my first assumption, but the poster clearly states the studio is owned by Microsoft and Activision. High Moon Studios would be the next best candidate. They are currently working as a Call of Duty support studio, but may have been able to slice off a small team to work on Crash Team Racing.
There was a report last year that a new studio had been formed out of people from King, the mobile arm of Activision. According to Windows Central, the goal of the new studio was to work on smaller games based on existing Activision-Blizzard IP, though at the time it was believed that the projects would be for mobile.
It’s worth remembering that the official Crash Bandicoot X account recently tweeted that the game had achieved over 10 million copies sold. While that number was achieved over quite a long period and many, many discounts, it might be enough to tempt Activision into re-releasing it for some quick cash.
Speaking of which, the poster claims that the game will get a “full” release on consoles for $40 and will “100% be available on xbox gamepass for PC users”. However, he/she is not sure if it will be on Steam. This would be very odd as Microsoft has consistently been putting games onto Steam.
The poster also shares a few other details, stating that there will be “A few new characters” as a “thank you to the fans” along with one new track.
As for the original developers Beenox, they apparently have had minimal involvement with the project. The poster says that they were “nice enough to give us their notes and information about the code” but otherwise have not had any hands on with the game.
A new “reserve” meter has been added, and can be seen in the fuzzy screenshots, but aside from that, the gameplay itself hasn’t been touched.
For now, it’s just a post from a throwaway account – one claiming to have even turned on a VPN when making the account to cover their tracks – but one that feels plausible enough to raise eyebrows. I’ve reached out the poster in a bid to ask questions and maybe even find a way to verify they are legitimate.
