Great opportunities don’t come by very often, and Xbox missed out on a big one not so long ago. According to a Marvel executive, Xbox rejected the chance to make a licensed Spider-Man game, which would have turned the series into an exclusive Xbox title. And as we all know, Marvel Games ended up taking its offer over to PlayStation who snatched their handoff.
The executive in question was a Mr. Jay Ong, who is the vice president at Marvel Games. The information was attributed to a recent video game book by Steven L Kent, and in it, Ong also spoke about how the company wanted a better deal for the series, which resulted in them cutting ties with Activision.
Ong said that Marvel Games became unhappy with the quality of the Spider-Man games which Activision was in control of (although some would beg to differ), so termination of the partnership was the only thing left to do. It sounds like there may have even been some bitterness during the cutting of ties also. Ong claims that Activision said, “What are you going to do with this IP after you get it back?” To which Ong replied, “I’m going to find a better home for it.” Ong reported that Activision’s reply was, “Good luck finding your unicorn.” It’s like we’re out at sea with all that salt flying around.
Marvel Games then began to look for a new direction for its Spider-Man game, which is why they contacted both Xbox and PlayStation, only for Xbox to turn it down and PlayStation then accepting the offer. You might be wondering why Microsoft would ever do such a thing, especially with a series that had so much potential as this one did. Well, it was a strategic decision from Microsoft as it wanted to focus on its own IP instead.
PlayStation got its exclusive, handed the reins over to Insomniac (a growing partner of Sony’s at the time) and the rest is history as they say. The success of Marvel’s Spider-Man was almost instant, selling a massive 20 million copies, with the Miles Morales sequel fairing even better.
Microsoft might very well be kicking itself because the future of the current series will only go from strength to strength, there is already a Spider-Man 2 game coming out in 2023 as well. Insomniac released a teaser trailer last year which you can watch below.
