Xbox didn’t want Marvel exclusives, says Marvel Games boss
According to Jay Ong, head of Marvel Games, Xbox has turned down the opportunity to develop exclusive Marvel games for its consoles.
Ultimately, this led to the deal with Sony that brought Insomniac Games’ developed Marvel’s Spider-Man to the PlayStation 4.
A missed opportunity
That emerges from the book The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2 by Steven L. Kent (via ResetEra), in which Ong also talks about how they gave up their agreement with Activision.
According to Ong, Marvel Games was not happy with the quality of Activision’s Spider-Man games. Ultimately, it was mutually agreed to terminate the license agreement early.
Activision then asked what they were planning to do with the brand. To which Ong replied, “I’ll find a better home for it.” Activision’s response was, “Good luck finding your unicorn.”
Xbox and PlayStation in conversation
Marvel Games then contacted Xbox and PlayStation to see if they were interested in an exclusive partnership.
Ong says Microsoft’s strategy was to focus on its own brands, so it missed the opportunity.
That, in turn, was Sony’s chance. “I sat down in a conference room in Burbank in August 2014 with Adam Boyes and John Drake, two senior third-party partnership executives at PlayStation,” says Ong. “I said, ‘We dream that it’s possible that we can beat Arkham and have at least one game, maybe even multiple games, that could drive adoption of the platform.’
Sony in turn offered to make a PlayStation-exclusive Triple-A game about Spider-Man and gave the project to the then independent studio Insomniac Games. They were described as “one of Sony’s most important partners”.
The rest is history. Marvel’s Spider-Man has sold more than 13 million copies, and its offshoot Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales has sold another 6.5 million copies. A sequel, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, is currently in the works.
Reference-www.eurogamer.de
