Less than a week after the upcoming Marvel Avengers video game finally started garnering some positive buzz with the announcement of its betas and the reveal of Hawkeye, opinion on the title has once again soured dramatically among many gamers and critics after Sony confirmed that one of Marvel’s most-popular characters, Spider-Man, would be playable on PlayStation consoles only.
This means that, while Marvel Avengers will release on Microsoft’s family of Xbox One consoles and on PC via a variety of online stores, only those that own a PlayStation 4 console will gain access to Spider-Man. This doesn’t appear to be a timed exclusive deal either. Xbox and PC players will never get to play Spider-Man in their version of the game.
Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man comes to Marvel’s Avengers, exclusively on PlayStation. Crystal Dynamics offers early details on its own, unique take on the post-launch Hero: https://t.co/GA3t6Y40KI pic.twitter.com/TEho59XfIc
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) August 3, 2020
While Sony does maintain a lot of the rights when it comes to Spider-Man’s usage in a variety of media platforms, the character has frequently appeared in various video games on and PC and other consoles such as LEGO Marvel Superheroes, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Disney Infinity, and Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite. Restricting Spider-Man to the PS4 version of Marvel’s Avengers is clearly a decision Sony made to help promote its PlayStation consoles, in particular its upcoming PS5 which launches later this year and will be competing directly with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
Console exclusive video game content isn’t a new marketing strategy and it’s often met with frustration by gamers who simply want all of the available content on their version of the game. Soulcalibur II is one of the more famous examples of a multi-platform games with platform exclusive characters. It included Zelda’s Link on the GameCube version, Spawn on the Xbox version, and Tekken’s Heihachi on the PlayStation 2 version. Thankfully, this practice was phased out over subsequent entries in the Soulcalibur franchise.
Another example would be Boba Fett in Disney Infinity 3.0 whose figure was sold with the PlayStation version months ahead of its individual release meaning that players on Xbox One and other platforms couldn’t play as the fan favorite bounty hunter at launch.
It’s unclear how this decision will affect sales. Those who own both an Xbox One and a PlayStation 4 will likely just buy the PlayStation version but the lack of Spider-Man on other platforms could frustrate gamers so much that they might skip the title completely.
Marvel Avengers is due out on September 4th with its closed and open beta periods set to run later this month.
Has the exclusivity of Spider-Man affected your decision to play Marvel Avengers? Has it convinced you to buy the PS4 version or even purchase a PS4 console? Share your thoughts with the community in the comments below and then follow us on Pinterest and Twitter for more Xbox gaming news.
