Yesterday, saw what what was some good news for some when it was announced that Spider-Man would be joining the roster of Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers next year. I say some, because it was announced it would be exclusive to the PlayStation versions of the game, meaning Xbox and PC players will be locked out of playing the character. As with any exclusive deals, that obviously makes those primarily playing on other systems less than happy. Well, buckle in, because apparently it’s just the beginning.
Kinda Funny’s Imran Kahn took to the popular ResetERA gaming forum in regards to a topic on the above mentioned Spider-Man deal (spoiler: it was not a happy topic). In his post, he said that people really should be ready and conserve their energy at being mad, because if you’re upset now, over the course of the next year you’re going to be seeing a lot of similar deals from Sony.
“My hypothesis is that Sony isn’t leveraging ownership of Spider-Man (which they do not have) to keep him an exclusive character.
More likely it is that Avengers is a AAA game on competing platforms and Sony threw a bunch of money to keep the AAA Spider-Man realm associated with PlayStation consoles. The fact that this is a GaaS that is backwards compatible with/getting a next-gen update for PS5 means they expect people to buy it and base some degree of next-generation console purchasing decisions on that friends list and purchase.
If you guys are mad about this, I suggest saving some energy, because the next year will be a marathon of getting upset.”
When asked by another user if he meant exclusive deals from both Microsoft and Sony would be making people upset, he said he wasn’t familiar with what Microsoft was doing and was referring to Sony, saying, “I know Sony is doing this a lot.”
While we have to chalk this up to rumor due to the nature of how the information is presented, Kahn has always been a pretty reliable source, and it matches with Sony’s strategy thus far. Not only the Spider-Man deal, but the PS5 reveal was filled with timed exclusives such as Deathloop, which launches this year, and there are other rumors that Sony still has big third party exclusives to reveal in the near future. It seems that timed exclusive deals are going to be a very big push for the first year of the PS5, and maybe even beyond.