Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales have been big exclusives for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, but things almost played out very differently. According to an excerpt from Steven L. Kent’s 2021 book The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol. 2, Xbox had passed on making a deal with Marvel, which left an open door for Sony.
Said excerpt recently floated around on ResetEra and had quotes from Vice President and Head of Marvel Games Jay Ong. Activision and Marvel prematurely ended their Spider-Man game deal because neither party was satisfied with Activision’s licensed games. Activision then reportedly told Marvel: “Good luck finding your unicorn.” (The thread uses “Spider-Man license” and “Marvel license” almost interchangeably, but it’s unclear if they are actually one in the same, given the complications of licensing.)
Ong was on a pursuit to find a publisher that had not embraced the “crappy licensed games” mentality, which is a very direct shot at Activision and its less-than-stellar licensed game review scores. According to Ong, Spider-Man needed “needed new talent, a bigger budget, and fresh eyes” to go beyond what Activision had done with the hero.
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Ong said he needed a publisher with a “deep pool of talent, commitment to quality, and inexhaustibly deep pockets” to realize the potential he knew was there. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were three possible candidates that fit the bill and had an “eye for long-term investments, one with a vested interest that would benefit from building a franchise.” Any talk of Nintendo getting the license seemed to die pretty early because Nintendo “mostly developed games based on its own intellectual properties.” However, Microsoft, a far more realistic partner, said it wanted to focus on its own IP when asked.
This rejection then led Ong to PlayStation’s Vice President of Third Party Relations and Developer Technology Group Adam Boyes and Director of Portfolio Strategy John Drake in August 2014 who were both more receptive to the idea.
“I said, ‘We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat [the Batman Arkham series] and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform,'” said Ong.
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Sony’s response was to make a big PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man game and gave the project to Insomniac Games. Insomniac Games Founder and CEO Ted Price has recounted the story before a few times from his perspective with more details, saying Sony came to him asking if his team wanted to work on a Marvel game. Price also added that Marvel was interested in what Insomniac was up to at the time because there could be an opportunity to collaborate. Price went to ask various people at Insomniac if they would actually want to work on a Marvel game and got a bunch of enthusiastic yesses, which he said he did not expect. Marvel then sat down with Insomniac and asked what Marvel franchise it wanted to work on and Insomniac quickly chose Spider-Man.
This deal has done well for PlayStation since 2018’s Spider-Man, as of November 2020, has sold over 20 million copies, a number it has likely blown past in the 18 months since. As of July 2021, Miles Morales has sold over 6.5 million units, another number that it has probably far exceeded in the last 10 months, especially since it is still consistently among the NPD’s top 20 games each month. Insomniac Games is also not only working on one Marvel title, but two, as the studio is developing Spider-Man 2 and a Wolverine game.
