Xbox turned down Marvel prior to Sony’s Spider-Man exclusive deal

Marvel began looking to revamp its efforts in the video gaming space back in 2014, long before the reveals of Spider-Man, Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Ultimate Alliance 3. So far, only Nintendo and Sony have secured Marvel exclusives, and it turns out that Microsoft passed up on the opportunity. 

In a new book, The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, Marvel Games head, Jay Ong, shares a story about the early days of revamping Marvel's video game presence. The team's main goal was to find new studios and publishers willing to take a chance on bucking the trend of low-quality licensed titles, so they started right at the top and approached all three major console makers, including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo.

The book reveals that when early talks took place back in 2014, Microsoft passed on the offer to produce a Marvel game, and instead opted to focus on its own IP. At the time, Xbox was going through internal changes following the poor reception to the Xbox One and had just a few first-party studios under its wing. Overall, it was a much smaller operation compared to today.

Sony was in an entirely different position, having stronger third-party relationships and more first-party studios. On top of that, the PS4 was a huge hit and Sony was looking to invest in future exclusives for the console. As a result, Sony and Marvel hatched a plan to produce a Spider-Man game for the PS4, with the goal of surpassing the Arkham games in quality. Ultimately, Spider-Man became a key exclusive for the PS4 and Insomniac's games will continue to push sales of the PS5 this generation too.

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KitGuru Says: We often don't hear about the big success stories that publishers passed on. Unfortunately, passing up on Marvel may come back to bite Microsoft this generation, almost a decade later, as Marvel and Sony have deepened their relationship, continuing Insomniac's Spider-Man series and planning more games, including a new PS5 exclusive focused on Wolverine. 

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