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Sony, which was rumored to have purchased the IP for the once extremely popular Crash Bandicoot series, does not appear to have done so.

Activision, the current owner, took down the official Crash Bandicoot site earlier this week, leading to speculation that it had sold the rights and moved on. All Crash references were also removed from the publisher's web properties.

Sony had been rumored as a buyer as there was a supposed easter egg in the recent PS4 launch trailer (below), which appeared to show Crash moving from Activision to Sony Computer Entertainment.

Crash was a huge hit franchise for the original PSone and PS2, and was originally created by Naughty Dog for Sony. The last game for consoles was "Activision's Crash: Mind Over Mutant" which launched in 2008 to mild success.

Says Activision of the series: "Activision owns Crash Bandicoot and we continue to explore ways in which we could bring the beloved series back to life."

Pokemon X and Y, the latest games in the blockbuster franchise, are the fastest ever to reach 1 million sales on the 3DS handheld, says Nintendo.

The titles took just one day to reach the milestone, beating out first-party winners like Mario Kart 7 which took a few weeks.

Nintendo offered a little bit of everything in the new games, including 3D battles, legacy Pokemon, new "mega-evolutions" and just general updates to the gameplay.

Check this interesting infographic for more on the release and milestones of the game:

Last week, the Android 4.4 update began rolling out for the Moto X, as long as you were a Verizon customer.

As of today, the new operating system is now headed to T-Mobile and AT&T users, as well. Following the news, Sprint is the only carrier without the update.

The rollout will begin just a month after the launch of the Google Nexus 5 (and with it, KitKat) and it even beats Google's older Nexus devices like the Nexus 4, and the Google Play Experience versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One.

Android 4.4 adds SMS/MMS support in Hangouts, aesthetic changes and performance tweaks under the hood.

All Google Chromebook users will soon be able to use voice activation like their Android 4.4 counterparts.

The new update will give Chromebook users the ability to say "Okay Google" to activate voice search within ChromeOS offline and online.

Developer channel users will get the update first, but the service is likely to be in an early beta at first launch.

If you are in the developer channel, Google says to head over to chrome://flags/#enable-app-launcher-start-page to enable experimental updates.

Outside of being available for the Nexus 5, Google has also been testing it for the Chrome browser although without a timeframe for release.

According to sources, streaming music giant Spotify has secured $250 million in financing that now values the company at over $4 billion.

The money will be used to help global expansion, as the company is already well established in the U.S. and Western European nations. Spotify is looking to expand to nations like Japan.

Spotify, at a valuation north of $4 billion, would approach the market value of Pandora, which is the only public streaming music company. Pandora IPOd in 2011 and is now valued at $5.7 billion.

The company generated revenue of $585 million but the company has never earned a profit as expansion expenses increase.

Spotify has over 6 million paying subscribers, paying either $5 or $10 per month for premium features like unlimited ad-free streaming and mobile access. The company has 24 million active free users.

The major Taiwanese PC maker, which continues to struggle financially, has accepted the resignations of Chairman and CEO J.T. Wang and President Jim Wong.

Making the news even more major is the fact that Wong had been long rumored to be replacing Wang if he ever left as CEO.

Company founder Stan Shih has taken over the positions as the company searches both internally and externally for a new candidate. The title of CEO will be eliminated and those responsibilities will be transferred to the chairman.

Shih will not take a salary for his new role, and Wang and Wong will stay on as advisers. "I will honor and complete all the public affairs and event engagements that I have committed to, but I will also fully support Acer's ICT (information and communications technology) device business and carry out the company transformation," Shih said in a statement. "In addition, George Huang who is one of my co-founding partners of Acer will join with me and the management team to lead our company at this time."

Verizon has become the second carrier to get the HTC One Max phablet.

The device features a 5.9-inch 1920x1080 LCD, is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor, 2GB RAM has 32GB internal storage and a large 3300mAh battery.

Additionally, the phone has an UltraPixel camera with an f/2.0, 28mm wide angle lens.

The phone will not come cheap. Verizon has priced the Max at $299.99 with two-year contract, and will also be available for $25 per month through Verizon Edge. Sprint is offering the phone for $249 or $149 for brand new customers.

Check the product page.

Fans of J.R.R Tolkien, rejoice, Google has created a new Chrome 'experiment' for Middle-Earth, building large detailed interactive maps as "a showcase of web experiments written by the creative coding community."

The maps come just weeks before the hugely anticipated release of the "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" on December 13th. The film is the second of a new trilogy for Lord of The Rings fans.

Within the maps there are three interactive locations; The Trollshaws, the Elven refuge of Rivendell and the fortress of Dol Guldur.

If you click through, you will get an audio introduction and the bios of different characters that you can swipe through to learn more about. There are a few mini-games, as well, playable through the Chrome browser or on Android.

Google says new locations will be added in the near future, including Lake Town and Lonely Mountain (where the dragon Smaug lives). The map is zoomable and includes all of the major landmarks and towns.

Microsoft has boasted that over 1 million Xbox One units were sold during the console's first day of availability.

The figure surpasses that of Microsoft's predecessor, the Xbox 360, and matches Sony's recent PlayStation 4 launch.

Xbox One consoles went on sale in 13 markets on November 22nd, and Microsoft also added that many retailers had sold out and that the company was working to replenish stock.

Sony and Microsoft are leading a revival of the gaming industry, which just had its biggest growth in over two years, even before the launch of the new next-generation consoles.

According to research firm NPD, the video game industry had its best quarter in over two years.

For the quarter ended September 30th, US gamers spent $3.45 billion, a large 17 percent year-over-year increase.

Digital sales, which include social network casual games, full games, DLC, subscriptions and mobile games jumped to $1.72 billion, followed by new physical game sales at $1.3 billion and used games accounting for $436 million.

Digital content sales were up 35 percent, and new physical games were up 20 percent.

The fourth quarter is expected to be massive for the industry, following the launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Each console saw over 1 million unit sales in their first days of launch, and game sales are expected to get a large boost across the board.

Game of Thrones fans received some great news this week as HBO announced that their popular HBO Go platform is now available through Google's Chromecast HDMI dongle.

Says the search giant: "Grab your favorite snack and get cozy on your Iron Throne, because HBO GO has added Chromecast support to their Android, iOS and web app. Now you can easily enjoy "Game of Thrones," "Boardwalk Empire," "Girls" and your favorite movies on your TV by casting from the HBO GO app or website.

To start casting from HBO GO, just check that you have the latest version of the app for Android or iOS. You can also cast from hbogo.com using Chrome browser on your laptop or any Chromebook. The mobile and web apps will be rolling out over the next few days."

As with other services, once you download the app or visit the web page, you just have to hit the "cast" button to send the stream to your TV via your home network.

A jury has ruled today that Samsung must pay Apple $290 million in additional damages for their patent infringement loss. Apple had been requesting $380 million.

Altogether, the damages award now totals $930 million. Samsung had argued that it only owed $52 million in additional damages.

"For Apple, this case has always been about more than patents and money," Apple said in a statement. "It has been about innovation and the hard work that goes into inventing products that people love. While it's impossible to put a price tag on those values, we are grateful to the jury for showing Samsung that copying has a cost."

Samsung will of course be appealing, and says they are "disappointed by today's decision, which is based in large part on a patent that the US Patent and Trademark Office has recently deemed invalid."

Last year, a jury ruled that Samsung infringed on five Apple patents related to design and functionality. From the first trial, Samsung owed $640 million in damages. The new award ruling was dependent on what the two sides what agree to in regards to Apple's lost profits, Samsung's profits, and the amount that would have been paid in royalties. What was eventually agreed upon was that Samsung sold 10.7 million devices that infringed on Apple patents, generating a whopping $3.5 billion in revenue.

Yesterday we reported that popular media player Winamp was being shutdown by its owner AOL at the end of December.

The outpour of support for the software was great, and a petition on Change.org reached nearly 6000 signatures overnight to save the media player or at least make it open source. While many were sad the software was to be shut down, there may be an unlikely white knight; Microsoft.

Crunch is reporting that AOL and Microsoft are currently in talks for the software giant to potentially purchase Winamp along with media streaming service Shoutcast.

If the deal does not go through, the report states that AOL will announce the shut down of Shoutcast next week, as well.

AOL purchased Winamp creator Nullsoft for $80 million in 1999 but has never really cared about making the service mainstream. The software just made it to Android in 2011.

After 15 years, the end of an era is here. Media player Winamp will shut down for good on December 20th.

Its parent company, AOL, announced today that the music player and all related services will be closed.

The player was first released in 1997 and offered a light playback tool for MP3s and other audio and video files. More recently, the software added online music streaming, and Gracenote integration.

Reads the Winamp homepage: "Winamp.com and associated web services will no longer be available past December 20, 2013. Additionally, Winamp Media players will no longer be available for download. Please download the latest version before that date. See release notes for latest improvements to this last release.
Thanks for supporting the Winamp community for over 15 years."

You can still get the media player here at Afterdawn: Winamp v5

Years after it made its introduction on iOS and Android, Windows Phone has finally gotten an official Instagram app.

Reads the blog post:

In that past year, however, Instagram isn't all that's grown. We've also seen the rise of a new mobile platform as tens of millions of people around the world have taken to Windows Phones. Our mission is to give everyone the ability to capture and share the moments around them, so our team has been working hard to bring Instagram to Windows Phone users everywhere.

We wanted to make Instagram available to people with Windows Phones as quickly as possible, so we focused on creating an awesome experience with Instagram's core features. We're not finished, and our team will continue developing the Windows Phone app to keep releasing features and bringing you the best Instagram possible.

Instagram is a place where people come to be inspired and connect with others, and we're thrilled to welcome Windows Phone users to the community. We can't wait to see what you'll create.