PlayStation and Xbox are two lifelong competitors. Together with Nintendo, they form a trio of giants in the international video game industry and dominate the rankings around the world. However, PlayStation stands out on one point, Sony’s company has an astronomical number of exclusives. Licenses from The Last of Us, to Horizon, via Gran Turismo, it is impossible to name them all. But if there is one that works on the side of the Insomniac Games subsidiary, it is that of Spider-man, with a first game released in 2018, then a spin-off in 2020.
The Marvel franchise therefore did well to partner with PlayStation for the production of its games, which then met with phenomenal success, so much so that a Spider-Man 2 is planned for 2023. However, this license should not be a PlayStation exclusive…
Marvel was looking for a privileged partner
It’s in his book “Ultimate History of Video Games Volume 2” that author Steven Kent went behind the scenes of Marvel’s strategy in the video game industry. In 2014, Marvel is recruiting Jay Ong as head of brand expansion strategy in the video game space. At that time, the company was looking for new partners among the industry giants, so it contacted Xbox and PlayStation.
Jay Ong explains: “Being more console oriented in the past, I reached out to both sides, both Xbox and PlayStation, and said, ‘We don’t have any big console deals with anyone right now. would you like to do?” Microsoft’s strategy was to focus on its own intellectual properties. They declined”.
Xbox therefore leaves PlayStation a golden opportunity, which Sony’s company therefore accepted. The Marvel games were therefore launched, and the studios of Insomniac Games were appointed to lead the project. As a result, Marvel’s Spider-Man is a total hit, so much so that Marvel breaks its contract with Activition, the source of all Spider-Man and X-Men titles since the end of the 90s. In question, a last catastrophic game , The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which had been cut by the critics. From then on, Sony officially had a monopoly on Marvel games.
Marvel and PlayStation projects
Just as PlayStation and Xbox compete, Marvel and DC Comics are too. So much so that when the two companies started working together, Marvel aimed to make a game that could beat Batman Arkham, the game that had upended the industry’s view of “superhero” games, with more than 10 million copies sold.
Sony therefore bet big: 100 million dollars for the first opus. An investment which, according to Jay Ong, has paid off.
Like what, a refusal from Xbox led to a great collaboration between Marvel and Sony, which is just beginning. We can’t wait to see what the 3rd installment of the PlayStation license has in store for us!
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