Marvel proposed to both Xbox and Sony to develop its games in 2014, but Microsoft refused: the sensational background was told by Jay Ong, former vice president of Marvel Games, on the pages of the book Ultimate History of Video Games volume 2.
As we know, Sony then entrusted Insomniac Games with the development of Marvel’s Spider-Man, which has totaled sales of over 20 million copies, revealing itself as one of the most successful PlayStation exclusives ever.
Ong had been hired to find out why the company had achieved such extraordinary results with film transpositions but could not do the same in the field of video games.
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What they needed was a partner who didn’t adopt a renounce mentality for licensed games, a company with a particular eye for long-term investments, with interests that would benefit from building a franchise.
This partner should have had a wealth of talent, a commitment to quality, and a lot of resources. There were three companies that matched that description but one of them, Nintendo, developed almost exclusively games based on its intellectual property.
“Having had a background in the console first partying, I got in touch with both of the other two companies, Xbox and PlayStation, telling them ‘we don’t have any big deal at the moment – what would you like to do?’ Microsoft’s strategy was also focused on its intellectual properties, and so they refused. ”
“So in August 2014 in Burbank, I sat down with two PlayStation executives from the third party division, Adam Boyes and John Drake. I said, ‘We have a dream and we believe it’s possible, that we can beat Batman: Arkham and have a great game or perhaps a series of games that can contribute to the sales of your platform. ”
“Boyes, Drake, Connie Booth (vice president of product development at Sony) and Scott Rohde (senior vice president of product development) offered to make an exclusive triple-A PlayStation dedicated to Spider-Man .”