In describing the concept of Crimson Skies, Jordan Weisman stated he wanted to 'take the idea of 16th century Caribbean piracy and translate into a 1930s American setting'. Within this divergent timeline, the United States has collapsed, and air travel has become the most popular mode of transportation in North America as a result, air pirates thrive in the world of Crimson Skies. The series is set within an alternate history of the 1930s invented by Weisman and McCoy. The Crimson Skies trademark was renewed in 2013 by Microsoft for video games, although the trademark for other related media has been abandoned. Weisman's former company, Smith & Tinker Inc., had announced in 2007 that it had licensed the electronic entertainment rights to the franchise, but no new titles were developed.
The series' intellectual property is currently owned by Microsoft Corporation through it's Xbox Game Studios division. Crimson Skies is a tabletop and a video game media franchise created by Jordan Weisman and Dave McCoy, first released as a board game in 1998 and then as a PC game in 2000.
