Insomniac has revealed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will not have a demo.
As reported by PSU, Insomniac’s Twitter account simply replied to a fan “no plans for a demo!” when asked.
There is no clear reason why Insomniac chose not to provide a demo, but the company may have been looking at it the other way around – that they didn’t see a reason to release a demo.
Game demos are not necessarily a case of games being too big to have to have demos. Resident Evil 4 Remake is possibly the most recent high profile project that has a demo, and there’s a rumor going around that Capcom’s other big release, Street Fighter 6, might also get a demo soon as well.
It’s a great bonus for gamers if they are getting it, for example, because of the platform they chose, or the subscription they signed up to. Ultimately, it is marketing from the point of view of the publisher, and the marketing only becomes worthwhile if the demo pushes players forward towards actually buying the game.
This also comes in light of the popularity of the Spider-Man franchise in general. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse released in theaters earlier this month, putting the spotlight on Miles Morales. Miles became a popular video game character off of the strength of the previous Spider-Verse movie, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, but now the character himself may be at the peak of his popularity.
And that works out well with matching Miles with Peter Parker. As the original Spider-Man, Peter has decades of pop culture history behind him, and is indisputably one of the most popular comic book characters of all time.
Insomniac may be restricted on what they can do with the property because it’s owned by Marvel, and ultimately, Disney.
But for what it’s worth, it may simply be the case that Sony and Insomniac Games really can rest on their laurels and depend on the popularity of the previous Marvel’s Spider-Man games to carry this one too.
It should be noted that Sony continues to be quite evasive on more details for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 itself. In fact, they have been so secretive that they had to assure investors that the game would be releasing on this financial year. Perhaps that can’t be avoided when this game remains to be the only remaining Sony first party release of the year.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be released exclusively on PlayStation 5 on October 5, 2023.
