In the book The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol. 2 by Steven L Kent, published last year, Executive Vice President and Head of Marvel Games Jay Ong explained that Microsoft turned down an offer to develop exclusive Marvel games Xbox, so they went with Sony.
According to Jay Ong, Marvel Games ended their association with Activision because they were unhappy with the quality of the Spider-Man games they had released. Ong recalls that when their deal ended, Activision asked him what he planned to do with the IPs now that they had them back, to which Ong said that he was going to find them a better home.
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According to the book, the Activision representative told Ong “good luck finding your unicorn”, so Ong met with both Xbox and PlayStation to see if either would be interested in an exclusive partnership. “We don’t have any console deals with anyone right now, what would you like to do?”, was what he asked them.
As Ong recalls, at that time Microsoft’s strategy was to focus on its own licenses, so they decided to let the offer pass. Instead, when they went to Sony, they proposed to make a AAA Spider-Man game and gave the project to Insomniac Games. Although Insomniac was not yet part of Sony at the time, it was considered one of its most important partners.
We have a dream that this is possible, that we can beat Arkham and have at least one game and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of their platform.”
Read more: Sam Raimi isn’t ruling out another Spider-Man movie with Tobey Maguire.
Jay Ong’s intention was for Marvel Games to have a video game on a par with Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham trilogy, and today we can see that they succeeded, as Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man is one of the most acclaimed games of the last generation, has sold more than 20 million on pS4 and PS5, has a spin-off with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and a sequel in development.
Source: ResetEra, thanks to VGC.