Xbox passed on an exclusive Marvel partnership before PlayStation made Spider-Man

Everyone loves the Spider-Man series that Insomniac has been working on for the past few years. Wildly enough, it’s partially happening cause Xbox turned Marvel down.

An excerpt from Steven L. Kent’s 2021 book The Ultimate History of Video Games Volume 2 (spotted by ResetEra and VGC) reveals that Marvel Games wasn’t happy with the reception of Activision’s various Spider-Man titles. According to Marvel Games head and executive VP Jay Ong, Activision asked, “So what are you going to do with this IP after you get it back?” during the contract termination process. “I’m going to find a better home for it,” Ong said. To which Activision replied, “Good luck finding your unicorn.”

After both companies mutually parted ways, Ong reached out to Microsoft and Sony about an exclusivity deal.

“We don’t have any big console deals with anyone right now,” Ong said. “What would you like to do?”

Apparently, Microsoft passed to focus on its internal franchises like Halo and Gears of War. Yeah, that may sound like a bananas decision, but keep in mind that this all went down in 2014 when properties like Spider-Man were in a weird place. Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a critical and commercial disappointment that same year, and Tom Holland wouldn’t put on the spandex for a while. Plus, the whole stigma of licensed video games in general.

From there, Ong had much more success speaking with Sony.

“I sat down with these two execs from PlayStation third-party, Adam Boyes and John Drake, in August 2014, in a conference room in Burbank,” Ong said. “‘We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat Arkham and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform.'”

It turns out that Ong was right, as Spider-Man PS5 sold well over 20 million units.

Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.