Spider-Man 2
While everything is Starfield, Starfield, Starfield right now, with Microsoft celebrating what could be its biggest first party win in two generations now, it’s easy to overlook something happening across the blackwall over at Sony.
PlayStation is about to release Spider-Man 2 on October 20, which was in fact not delayed out of this fall, something some (myself included) predicted may happen. But Insomniac Games usually hit their mark, both in terms of game quality but also release dates.
While it’s easy to think of God of War, Uncharted, The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn as “the” PlayStation franchises, I’m not sure how many people actually realize just how big the first Spider-Man game was in the PS4 era.
It was…the biggest exclusive, in fact. Spider-Man sold 20 million copies, topping God of War’s 19.5 million, by last report. That’s also ahead of Uncharted 4’s 16 million and double The Last of Us Part II, Horizon Zero Dawn and TLOU Remastered at 10 million.
Spider-Man 2
More recently, as of 2022, Sony has reported that lifetime sales of both Spider-Man games, the first one and its PS5-launching Miles Morales spin-off, have topped 33 million. We have not heard about God of War Ragnarok sales since it announced 11 million copies sold in its first 10 weeks, but the point stands, Spider-Man 2, in theory, should be one of the biggest exclusives in the whole PS5 generation, if not the biggest like it was last time.
There are two ways this can go. Given the high quality of the first game, all PlayStation players show up for the second one, and sales increase further, as tends to happen with sequels in well-received franchises. That does seem likely.
Conversely, you can sometimes run into “more of the same” syndrome, where the first time, everyone was wowed by just how impressive Insomniac’s Spider-Man played. But now, that wow factor may be gone, even with new things like Symbiote powers.
I do expect Spider-Man 2 to do very well, but it does feel like it is getting a bit drowned out by so many absolutely stunning releases this year. Everyone has been talking about Tears of the Kingdom and Baldur’s Gate 3 non-stop, and now Starfield, for better or worse, has totally sucked the oxygen out of the room leaving really no one talking about Spider-Man at all in the run-up to launch here. The most real news I’ve heard from the game during this period is about their very cool themed PS5 launching.
Something just feels a bit off here. Granted, the news cycle is not real life, and again, it’s important not to underestimate the fact that Spider-Man is one of the most popular IPs in the entire world. Why do you think Sony is bothering to try to make an entire universe based on nothing but Spider-Man villains on film? And Insomniac’s realization of Spidey’s world is one of the best we’ve seen from the IP.
We’ll see how the game launches in a month from now. As Starfield hype/drama fades, hopefully Spidey will re-enter the conversation and we’ll see and hear more from it. Regardless, it should be big.
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