Honestly, if you’re reading this website then there’s a strong chance you were planning to purchase Marvel’s Avengers on either the PlayStation 5 or the PlayStation 4 anyway. If that’s the case, then good news: you’ll be able to play as Spider-Man for free at some point early next year. Not everyone is quite so enthusiastic, though.
Obviously, Xbox One and PC owners feel they’ve been done a disservice here, and speaking with Comicbook.com, Crystal Dynamics boss Scot Amos had the following to say: “Once you can execute and deliver, when it comes down to choices of where and what Spider-Man can be, that's a relationship question that PlayStation absolutely has the rights to, that as you guys know, with Sony's ownership there, and Marvel with Sony saying, ‘Hey, this is something we can do. This is something we can do on this platform.’”
Que? “So, we love the idea of being able to bring this character to the PlayStation players,” he continued. “As far as everybody goes, we just announced Hawkeye less than a week ago. We have two characters announced within a matter of five days, the future is bright. People will get fixated on one thing as opposed to, ‘Oh by the way, you're going to have hundreds of hours of content and years of storylines coming ahead of us, and new worlds and regions, and new heroes,’ and more stuff we haven't even announced yet.”
To be honest, we’re not sure Amos even answered the question, but we appreciate he’s in a difficult situation here as these kind of decisions are made several levels above his pay grade. As we wrote recently, Sony has never shied away from these kind of deals, and there’s clearly data that suggests they work. Besides, there may be bigger issues for Marvel's Avengers to contend with right now.
[source comicbook.com]
Comments 49
Everybody loves Spider-Man, regardless of platform. If it was Hawkeye who was exclusive, there wouldn’t have been as big an outcry. I think the problem is that Xbox and PC players don’t have their own exclusive characters to balance it out. Like Soul Calibur 2 for example had Heihachi on PS2, Link on GameCube and Spawn on Xbox. There was a reason to get different versions on different consoles while none being clearly ‘better’ than the other.
Needs some sauce.
https://media.makeameme.org/created/need-some-dressing.jpg
Microsoft started this exclusive content trend last generation. It was dumb then, its dumb now.
@nessisonett I still find it funny to this day that XBox has such few icons that they had to resort to a comic book character that (as far as I know, at least) has no apparent reason to be MS's exclusive character.
Well, to be perfectly fair Tekken is not exclusive to Sony either, but it's pretty much always been associated with it.
@clvr Well Todd McFarlane was already involved with the game because he designed Necrid so that’s why they had Spawn. Bear in mind this is very very early Xbox as well, I don’t think Master Chief would have particularly worked in Soul Calibur. They don’t really focus on that sort of mascot culture that Nintendo and Sony do though, that’s for sure.
Yep, I kind of think this game may need all the help it can get at this point. Don't know if its just me or if the lack of hype is universal but I don't think upsetting the limited mind share you have is a good move with so much investment on the line
They said something similar about Tomb Raider back in the day. Besides it isn't up to them what goes where anyway.
Although it is Marvel we’re dealing with it, I always er on the side of caution when they say the game will last as a service for years. If the game is unlucky to make its mark early, I’m sure SE will be quick to cut their losses and wheel out the guillotine.
Stop pretending it's an important concern haha .
This is getting so ridiculous.
@nessisonett ah, I didn't know that!
But yeah, MS had a free pass cause it was their first console, so that's understandable why they wouldn't have a mascot in SC2.
It's weird though that they're in the same situation they were 20 years ago 😅
How much you wanna bet that the Spider-man dlc will appear on the other version a year after its released.
@clvr That’s the thing though, nobody complained about Soul Calibur 2 because it was cool that we got characters that (sorta) represented that console. The problem here is that Spider-Man is universally loved and having a whole character exclusive in a game like this is pretty mad. I still reckon it should have just been a skin set from the PS4 game. Xbox could have perhaps had their own set of skins like a set of Xbox shirts for Ms Marvel, she’s a big gamer in the comics after all. And then Steam could have Gordon Freeman stuff like we’ve seen in Final Fantasy XV and Fall Guys.
Spider Man not being for all players isn’t the only controversial thing about this heap of garbage... I’d say the gameplay loop is gonna be wayyyyy more controversial. I’m not buying this Destiny wanna-be bull crap.
nobody cares, boring boring internet faux outrage, it's all quite pathetic, if anyone loves Spiderman that much why didn't you buy a PS4 to play marvels spiderman and the upcoming miles Morales game, yawn
@GAMER-GlRL exactly. If its that big of a deal, you would have bought a ps4 for Spiderman anyways
I just dont understand why people have got their knickers in such a twist over this. In the grand scheme of things, why give a s**t? 🤷♂️
Not a fan of this but this isn't on CD its Sony and SE who are at fault here. Also saying Sony owns SM in gaming doesn't really work when Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 had the character plus Miles, Spider-Gwen and Venom in it and that was a Switch game, this is very much a case of Sony offering SE a ton of money for this and SE saying yes.
I say just make a different character exclusive to Xbox and another for PC just like Soul Caliber use to do. Looking at this game it needs all the sales it can get and pissing off those few that would actually buy it day one is a bad business move.
@Kefka2589 But Avengers is multiplatform so big difference, Spider-Man PS4 and MAU3 wouldn't exist without Sony and Nintendo so its easier to accept them being exclusive games. Avengers though is an inferior game on Xbox and PC now and honestly i bet if Xbox had an exclusive character and not PS then mostly everyone on here would be annoyed as hell.
Xbox fans seemed more than happy when they had many console launch exclusives and an exclusive multiplayer mode on Tetris when it launches. As someone above says, if they were that bothered about Spider-Man then why don't they own a PS4 to play Spider-Man? If they're that bothered about it just don't buy it and play something else, its not that big of a deal
Maybe they should just make Avengers PlayStation exclusive in general
That might be the best solution
I think their lack of comments is just signalling that Sony probably has some sort of atomic bomb latched under the desks of every Crystal Dynamics employee as we speak.
Either way it's just dumb. I honestly would've preferred if Spider-Man wasn't even in the game to begin with if this is how it had to happen. He's not even a core Avengers member technically speaking. He's mostly been associated with the New Avengers since this game seems to care so much about the comic mythology
What's not to understand? Marvel owns the character, Sony owns enough adaptation rights for the character to have this much of a say in his multimedia appearances. I understand not liking it if you live outside PlayStationland, but unless you have enough money to lure related shareholders and IP owners into a better deal to back up this dislike, it's a moot point. And yes, no longer intending to get the game at all is a perfectly valid option, but there's no point in dramatising it either.
Pretty miraculous that Starlink didn't get half the flak for this back in the day - quite a bullet to dodge as far as fan scum are involved.
@tatsumi You joke about that but honestly, at this point it might as well be considering PlayStation is getting more in game content and exclusive events in addition to a whole character that other platforms are missing out on. At that point why not make it a PS4/5 game?
@nhSnork It's honestly crazy how much of a stake Sony has in the matter. They own damn near half of Spider-Man's multimedia presence. At one point they even had the TV production/distribution rights and now they own the developer who is currently in possession of the character's game license. Crazy.
@carlos82 speaking of Tetris, they've dropped Remote Play from the PS4 version, meanwhile it's coming to xCloud. Interesting.
@nessisonett Yeah the only way this Spider-Man thing could've made sense to some extent is if they were going to use the Insomniac Spider-Man with the Advanced Suit and everything in an attempt to quasi-connect the two games together as part of some shared Marvel Games Universe akin to the comics and movies given the Avengers are already implied to be based in New York in Spider-Man PS4.
If you want to play as spider man just buy a PlayStation and get the PlayStation version of the game or shut up. Sony going out of their way and getting exclusive content for their consumer for third party games isn’t Anti consumer it’s actually pro consumer.
@4kgk2 I mean if you weren't a PlayStation consumer I guarantee you this would've pissed you off and people would've responded to you the same exact way so that's not really a fair argument to make.
@4kgk2 Not everyone can afford to just buy a console if they’ve had an Xbox since it launched? We’re literally heading towards the worst recession in over 100 years. When a company announces that a game is heading multiplat, it’s not a big stretch to assume that you’d be getting the whole game on every console.
@TheFrenchiestFry Microsoft made these kind of exclusives deals all the time in the 360 days and I guess what I owned a Xbox 360 so I wouldn’t miss out on content.
@nessisonett well gaming is a selfish and expensive hobby.
@nessisonett exactly, that would've been the best approach by far.
But alas, this will give the internet something to cry foul.
A marvel game “with years of content”
Hahahahahahaha.
Good one.
Only if they can milk a LOT of money out of users. From everything we’ve heard this game will be done before Xmas for most people
Although I'm normally against partial exclusivity, I understand it for Spiderman, as it is in a weird ownership situation with marvel and Sony. Honestly Sony should have bought all of marvel back when they bought Spiderman, I remember they had a chance to buy it all and turned it down.
@4kgk2 Ok? You still don't speak for the majority. In fact I never owned an Xbox past the original model, so I missed out on stuff like Ultimate Alliance's character packs, which made even less sense than this because Activision was a third party publisher that never catered to one specific platform for prior Marvel games, and had no exclusive rights to make games about any characters outside Spider-Man. Even more baffling is the fact they actually added those characters in for free when the 8th gen remasters of the first game came out a few years ago.
@thefirst A favor?
Oh yes such a favor to ensure that other platforms get a version of the game that will always, regardless of the amount of content they do recieve, remain permanently incomplete. And this isn't even counting the exclusive events and side missions that PlayStation platforms are getting too. This is pretty scummy for a game that's meant to be multiplatform. It would've been better if the developer gave a ***** about retaining console parity.
@NomNom Yeah funny story, Marvel actually offered Sony the film rights for the large majority of their characters excluding Spidey, including all the original Avengers members when they were about to go completely bankrupt. Sony just turned it down instantly for Spider-Man's rights. It made sense at least back then because Spider-Man was practically the face of Marvel and a lot of the other characters were unproven in multimedia appearances except the Hulk.
@nessisonett Yeah but Kamala Khan's a PC gamer tho lol she plays World of Battlecraft
Actually that would be a pretty funny in joke for the Steam version
@clvr Well it’s got people talking about the blandest game to ever be made! The lack of hype for this game is crazy considering the MCU is pretty much the biggest media franchise ever. And I say that as a massive comics fan and sometimes critical but mostly a fan of the movies.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. It looks ass anyway.
@nessisonett main reason there’s were no complaints about Soul Calibur 2 is that every platform had an exclusive character. It was a tough choice <lolnoteveryoneloveslink> but regardless of choice, everyone felt they got a bonus.
There would be tons less heat in the air if the message was “Spider-Man exclusive for PlayStation, Deadpool for Xbox, Squirrel Girl for PC”
@Tharsman I’d kill for Squirrel Girl. Deadpool’s probably the only hero that would rival Spider-Man in popularity though, especially with xx_Pr0G4mer_xx types.
Who knows? Maybe with enough outcry, Spider-Man will end up being only a timed exclusive to placate the non-PlayStation owners who will settle for having Spider-Man much later.
Works for me as I never buy anything new because I wait for the discount in the online store and after all patches for bugs and DLC is available.
@thefirst how does that relate in anyway? None of the Game Pass games are withheld from Playstation. Plus Playstation Now is pretty much the same thing. This argument of yours is dumb.
@GAMER-GlRL I do have a PS4 and have Marvel's Spider-Man. Love it, but that doesn't make this any less of a ***** deal. Exclusivity of this nature should not exist.
@Kefka2589 those are whole games which is a horse of a different color. They want to make the entire Game Sony exclusive fine, but locking content out of other consoles permanently is an unforgivable underhanded tactic. I do not buy games that endulge in this practice.
@4kgk2 proconsumer, but antigamer and anti gaming community. This kind of deal only hurts the industry as a whole. I'll stick to Marvel's Spider-Man to get my Spider-Man fix. This Avengers game is trash now.
When the COD deals are announced I predict riots in the streets, xbox gamers and virtuous PS gamers to burn Japanese flags and Cerny s pictures and publicly break ps4 s with golf clubs.
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