Games Marvel are commonplace today and are not exclusive to Sony, since Square Enix, 2K Games and other publishers collaborate with marvel games. But the one who restored the image of Marvel games is the Spiderman of Insomniac Games, which almost did not see the light of day, since Marvel Games was also in contact with Microsoft for a major deal.
Spider-Man PS4 born of a refusal from Microsoft?
It is Jay Ongexecutive vice president of Marvel Games, who tells all about it in The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol.2 by Steven L. Kent, relayed by VGC.
In this book, Jay Ong looks back on the end of the partnership between Marvel and Activision, which takes place more precipitously than expected. Marvel Games was obviously not happy at all with the latest games Spiderman by Activisionand by mutual agreement, the deal between the two entities stopped, allowing Marvel Games to go and offer its licenses to others.
Ong then says that Activision would have wished him good luck in finding something better elsewhere, and Marvel Games then turned to Microsoft and Sony to find a deal which would relaunch the Marvel brands. Microsoft would then have refused, since Ong says that the manufacturer first wanted to focus on its own licenses.
However, Sony showed interest. Ong then says he had a meeting with Adam Boyes and John Drake (in charge of third-party publishers at PlayStation) in 2014, in which he claimed to want to produce one or more system-sellers for the PS4, with the objective in mind of producing titles as good as the games batman arkham. Sony would then have agreed to produce a AAA Spiderman, entrusted to Insomniac Games, still independent at the time. The rest of the story, we know it.
Nothing says that Marvel’s Spider-Man would not have seen the light of day if Microsoft had accepted the proposal (Marvel Games could have given different licenses to each of the two manufacturers), but we now understand why Marvel Games has a more privileged relationship with Sony than with Microsoft.