Marvel executive: Xbox turned down offer to do Marvel games

https://www.gameinformer.com/2022/05/23/xbox-declined-offer-to-make-marvel-games-according-to-marvel-executive

Xbox Declined Offer To Make Marvel Games, According To Marvel Executive

Executive vice president and head of Marvel Games Jay Ong has revealed in a book that both Xbox and PlayStation were approached about making Marvel video games but only one of the console makers accepted the offer.

A look around the gaming landscape reveals exactly which one, too: PlayStation, the company with an exclusive Spider-Man franchise, and an upcoming Wolverine game. And over on the Xbox side, you won’t find any new Marvel games developed by an Xbox studio because according to Ong, the company declined Marvel’s offer, opting instead to focus on its own IP, as reported by Video Games Chronicle.

The book, Steven L Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, houses an excerpt where Ong explains this deal and how it led to Marvel prematurely terminating a contract it had with Activision to make Spider-Man games. Ong says in the book that Marvel was unhappy with Activision’s Spider-Man titles and the two companies came to an agreement to end the licensing deal early. Ong said that Activision then asked him, “What are you going to do with this IP after you get it back?” Ong said, “I’m going to find a better home for it,” to which, Activision replied, “Good luck finding your unicorn.”

As we now know, that unicorn wasn’t going to be Xbox because it turned down the offer after Marvel Games reached out asking, “We don’t have any big console deals with anyone right now, what would you like to do?” PlayStation, however, bit.

“I sat down with these two execs from PlayStation third-party, Adam Boyes [now co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios] and John Drake [now vice president of business development for Walt Disney Games], in August 2014, in a conference room in Burbank,” Ong says in the book. “I said, ‘We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat [Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham franchise] and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform.”

PlayStation reportedly responded by asking to make a console-exclusive Spider-Man game and that turned out to be Marvel's Spider-Man, released in 2018. Spider-Man reviewed quite well and, as VGC notes, sold more than 20 million copies. It also spawned Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and a sequel to both in the form of Spider-Man 2 is now in development. Plus, Insomniac’s Spider-Man success likely led to them getting to develop its Wolverine game as well.

Wow, Xbox turned down Spider-Man to do their own thing.. I guess they were right, Crackdown was a huge hit 😆 At least Marvel is in good hands with Sony. Wouldn't you agree, SW?

Oh no!

@SolidGame_basic: because Xbox would have produced the same game we got from insomnia or???

Honestly with the track record of marvel games I can’t really blame them, besides Spider-Man and Batman there haven’t really been any good superhero games in ages…

Thank god!

@SolidGame_basic: the thing is, half the video games out there are about "super heroes", and thats after you exclude marvel. Spiderman is popular not because of anything but its a fantastic game in itself. Take a look at guardians of the galaxy, and the avengers games, they all flopped hard. If the games are good, people will buy them.

Good. Xbox and Marvel don't gel together

Looking at how shitty they've been, a wise move.

Marvel's Midnight Suns looks good though.

Marvel is horrible pop culture trash but you have to be completely dumb to not take the business opportunity.

Yeah, they took that L lmao

Nothing wrong with that. I love Marvel but if they wanted to do their own thing then so be it. 🤷‍♂️

Wow and here we were thinking that Sony used their movie license as leverage to get the deal.

We need more Spider-Man games like we need a hole in the head.

Saying they turned down Spiderman is purposely spreading misinformation.

Sony and insomniac made Spiderman what it is so they deserve credit, before that Spiderman (and marvel games in general) were trash.

It's unfair to judge this in post Spiderman PS4 world.

I agree they should have tried, but Xbox was a mess in 2014, they would've screwed it up anyway.

I suspect MS, especially after the Activision deal, will be producing their own Marvel game

Miles morales.....7 out of 10

Sony knocking it out of the park,............... NOT

🤣

Fucking DLC!

I mean Sony is still working on their second game (Wolverine). Nintendo published Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. This isn't exactly a race anybody has cornered at all. But if Wolverine is the bee's knees I can see Sony investing more into building a possible Marvel IP line-up, if not, they can keep Spider-Man as a strong single IP to bridge their films and games on. For now it seems like the bulk of Marvel content will be from third parties.

I reckon Microsoft were kicking themselves on how well Spider-Man sold on the PS4 back in 2018

Huge error of judgement I just wish ms would fund a new punisher game.

lmao, of course the cows would say so

@x_hedon said:

@blaznwiipspman1 said:

@SolidGame_basic: the thing is, half the video games out there are about "super heroes", and thats after you exclude marvel. Spiderman is popular not because of anything but its a fantastic game in itself. Take a look at guardians of the galaxy, and the avengers games, they all flopped hard. If the games are good, people will buy them.

We need more Spider-Man games like we need a hole in the head.

jeez I didn't realize there were this many. I did play one of activisions spiderman games back in the day on PC. It was pretty fun even back then.

@SolidGame_basic: "Wow, Xbox turned down Spider-Man to do their own thing.. I guess they were right, Crackdown was a huge hit 😆"

I'd say three 9s and a 10 last year says Xbox is doing pretty well. :-S

MS didn't have a dev that excelled at those kinds of games. So I doubt they were kicking themselves. :-S

Marvel and Disney should be getting turned down by everyone

Being that they could have had a big Marvel game, they opted for

• Battletoads
• State of Decay 2
• Bleeding Edge
• Crackdown 3

And then proceeded to litter the slate with a bunch of Forza games. I mean, they can still make Marvel games, but, yikes.

Sony doesn't even own the spiderman IP for games. If they wanted, MS could make their own spiderman game, and make it extremely similar to the playstation spiderman games. The only one who has a real say at the end of the day is marvel because they own the character rights to it. Last I checked, Disney owns marvel. The same story with wolverine.

The strange thing is that sony actually owns the spiderman IP for movies, and only movies.

"the company declined Marvel’s offer, opting instead to focus on its own IP"

that's funny considering they've barely done this in the last five years as well

Hopefully Wolverine is less boring then Spider man.

🤣

after they couldn't create their own thing, they were like "ah, heck, let's just buy publishers" 🤣

@SolidGame_basic: MS has so many old IPs from Xbox/Xbox 360 they could revive and bring back, dunno why they haven't.

Wise move? Spider-Man was nominated for Goty and is considered one of if not the best superhero game ever made. It's the best selling PS exclusive of all time.

Or do you mean wise move from Microsoft because they would have butchered the game?

I mean.. that's a lot of Spiderman games and all, but why is there a Punisher game that he is on the list of? He makes a small cameo appearance in the first level but he isn't even a playable character. I mean, if we are going to add cameos then there are a quite a few games missing on that list.

Funny thing is, State of Decay 2 has more and better gameplay than the vast majority of Sony's ips.

The excessive amounts of copium in this thread from Xbox fan boys is mind-boggling. In the span where this deal was made until now( 8 years) they have done nothing but 2 Halo games, 2 Gears , Endless Forza rehashes and a shitty crackdown game. Although Playstation isn't perfect this why they are the superior gaming company, they have people there that actually have some passion for gaming.

"But buh we don't need more Spider-Man games." Sorry to tell you but Insomniac's Spider-Man was the first " Great" Spider-Man game. The others have gone from decent ( meaning you could enjoy them if you liked the character) to absolutely abysmal.

So Although Marvel games aren't rare " Quality Marvel games can be counted on 1 hand". And I'm all for more quality games. Insomniac's Spider-Man is one of the best versions of Spider-Man in any medium... PERIOD! I expect Wolverine will be the best game he's ever been in and probably the best superhero game of all time.

I'm not even convinced you're a real person anymore. Just an A.I. created at Microsoft that's long since malfunctioned

It also turns out that Sony didn't pay for MGS4 exclusivity. Kojima simply didn't bother doing a port.

Sounds good Mr. Ryan.

I keep telling Xgoons stuff like this was the case over the years. They think Sony paid for every Japanese exclusive on PS consoles when the truth is, a lot of them just didn't bother to port to Xbox. MS usually compensated certain Japanese devs to put games on Xbox.. Some don't think porting is worth it.

But, but, those Xbox suckers said that Sony moneyhatted Marvel becuase Spidey is known as a multiplatform character

Metal Gear Solid 4 could've come to Xbox 360, but it was too complicated

https://www.gamesradar.com/metal-gear-solid-4-couldve-come-to-xbox-360-but-kojima-thought-it-was-too-complicated/

The Xbox 360's DVD-based disc drive just didn't cut it

"The book points out that, thanks to a quote from former PlayStation boss Jack Tretton saying Metal Gear Solid 4 was "exclusive on PS3," an agreement between Sony and Konami for exclusivity was always taken as an implied fact."

"However, that's apparently false. Contained in the book is an interview with former Kojima Productions developer Ryan Payton, where the dev reveals Konami staff weren't in favor of porting Metal Gear Solid 4 to the Xbox 360 because of its "inferior" hardware. "One fateful day, the Konami R&D team hosted a meeting where we got to see the fruits of their labor - Metal Gear Solid 4 running beautifully and smoothly on an Xbox 360," Payton says.

The developer further reveals that the port wasn't released because of the Xbox 360's inferior DVD-based disc drive. Sony authorized Konami to launch Metal Gear Solid 4 on two Blu-Ray discs, the first game to do so, while porting the game to the Xbox 360 would've required far more discs. Payton also reveals Microsoft even petitioned Hideo Kojima to bring the game to the Xbox 360 via pamphlets at E3.

Seems like MS made the one good decision they could have. F**k super hero/comic book games and movies. F**king creatively bankrupt garbage that you can't escape from anymore.

Xbox is practically non-existent in Japan, can you blame a Japanese developer for not wanting to port their games.

@x_hedon:

Sony know how to turn DLC into a a full release and milk those cows titties,look at Ragnarok....poor PlayStation saps

Spider-Man is a better game then 98% of the trash on Xbox.

@silentchief:

Spiderman is shit

Then what does that make virtually every game on Xbox? 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Imagine calling arguably the best superhero game of all time shit!

Xbox turned Marvel down because they knew they couldn’t make a good game with it. Sony stepped up and gave us Spider-Man and now Wolverine is up!

I think that's true at this point. Halo infinite was delayed a year and was still disappointing. The initiative ( A studio that they spent millions forming) lost half It's dev team and they have to bring in Crystal Dynamics to help them with Perfect Dark.

It's been a shitshow there.

Of course you hate Spider-Man because it's not an unfinished yellow-scoring piece of shit that you have to spend an entire console gen defending instead of enjoying. Xbots aren't gamers, they're gluttons for punishment 🤣