Spider-Man Could Have Been Xbox Exclusive
It turns out that we were very close to getting a Spider-Man game from Microsoft. However, the company rejected Marvel's offer, which gave Sony a chance.
- Spider-Man from Sony might never have been made;
- Marvel also wanted to work with Microsoft;
- The Redmond giant was not interested in the project because of the time spent to its own IP.
Marvel's Spider-Man is currently one of the most important Sony exclusives. If things went just a tiny bit different, though, the game would not have been released on PlayStation consoles.
Initially, Marvel wanted Microsoft to create the new Spider-Man game. Unfortunately, the company rejected this offer.
Spider-Man needs a home
As we can read in the second part of The Ultimate History of Video Games, in 2014, Jay Ong, the vice president of Marvel Games, began to wonder why the success of films based on comic books did not translate into video games.
Over time, he came to the conclusion that Spider-Man needed a new home. The brand should go into the hands of a company that wouldn't want to create another licensed money-grab game. So Marvel Games broke the deal with Activision.
The search for candidates to take over the rights to the character began. Potential partners for Jay Onga were three companies: Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony.
However, Onga quickly came to the conclusion that the first of them was not too interested in making games that were not its original brands. So he made an offer to the other two companies.
"I contacted both Xbox and PlayStation and said: 'We're not currently tied to any big console deals. What would you guys like to do with that?'. Microsoft's strategy was to focus on their own IP. They let it go. So in August 2014, I sat down with two PlayStation executives, Adam Boyes and John Drake, in a conference room in Burbank. I said: 'We dream of beating the Arkham and have one or more games on your platform.'"
Sony, fortunately, took up the challenge and decided to make a game about Spider-Man, a task which was given to Insomniac. As we all know, it became a huge hit.
However, if the story had turned out a little differently, at this point we could enjoy a game about Peter Parker from Microsoft. Just as well, however, such a title could not be a success like Marvel's Spider-Man.
One thing is almost certain. After the game's release in 2018, Microsoft was probably kicking itself for having turned down an offer with great potential.
