I don’t think they would think in this manner to guide their business decisions and I don’t think they care about having Spiderman knowing that Sony fully funded that game to be an exclusive.
But I think you’re onto something with the idea that increased adoption of Gamepass does get non-gaming IP holders to start paying attention.
I think you’re right in the sense that increased Gamepass adoption will lead to this consequence.
I get the feeling that when Hollywood wants a videogame tie-in, it’s a part of their merchandising strategy where they not only want to create some revenue but increased mindshare in certain demographics.
Maybe they would prefer to have 10 million people play a game based on their new movie to create new fans than to sell 1 million copies at $60?
Maybe they’ll view Gamepass as a “platform” that they can’t miss?
At the end of the day if the Xbox sells more and more consoles it’s hard to ignore. I think Disney would like the next Indiana Jones game to hit the PS consoles because they’re the leading platform in terms of sales. I’m not saying it will be, as Bethesda may have pushed for Xbox exclusivity knowing what their future held, but I’m saying it’s natural for Disney to want to be on all platforms much like MLB.
And the more Xbox sells the more IP holders want to be available on all machines. That said, these same IP holders would not want things exclusive to Xbox with that same reasoning.
I think a lot of Xbox fans are all of a sudden thinking that they’re getting Spider Man at some point. Good luck with that. I think everyone needs to stop daydreaming because both situations are completely different.
Sony owns the rights to Spider Man for movies and for Disney/Marvel to get in on that, they needed to give them exclusive rights to the games which after all, it was Marvel that went to Sony about making a game and Insomniac picked Spider Man which was a great decision.
If you guys or others want to play Spider Man so badly, buy a PS4 or PS5. I mean come on. Both sides always seem to argue that it’s about the games yet both sides also contradict themselves when they port beg for some odd reason.
As for MLB, huge difference as Sony obviously screwed up the contract or MLB insisted that there would be no clause that prevents MLB going on Game Pass day one. My guess is that either Sony will end this agreement/relationship this year or next year and move the San Diego Studio onto other games OR and this is my personal pick, MLB acquires the San Diego studio from Sony and has them continue to make the game multi-platform and can do what they want while keeping the studio itself intact and allowing Sony to make money off the game on their platform from their 30% cut while also eliminating the entire cost of developing the game.
Funny how so many here (including me) for months have wanted the Bethesda games to be exclusive to Xbox yet are hoping, wishing and praying for Spider Man to come to Xbox (not including me).
Huge difference between the best selling PS4 exclusive at around 20m and a baseball game that sells around 2m copies a year which is why MLB went to Sony in the first place.
Thankfully, I own both consoles and to be perfectly honest, as someone who missed out on the first two Batman Arkham games, I didn’t make the same mistake with 2018 Spider Man and I easily prefer it to stay exclusive to Sony, PlayStation and Insomniac because I know if it goes multi-platform, it’s not going to be Sony/Insomniac that develops the game and I don’t want some mediocre shitty Spider Man game just because the publisher wants a free cash grab.
“Sony obviously screwed up the contract or MLB insisted that there would be no clause that prevents MLB going on Game Pass day one.“ Peter420
It’s just speculation at this point but given Sony’s strained relationship with Disney (their company battles are very public at this point) then Sony better hope they didn’t “screw up the contract “ again.
I have a PS4 and a PS5, I don’t care about Xbox getting Spider-Man or not because I have already played Spider-Man and Miles Morales. I’m not daydreaming.
And you are missing the point. Going multi-platform doesn’t mean it’ll be made by a new studio, I’m saying Disney has all the power in the world to force Sony to make future INSOMNIAC’S Spider-Man games multi-platform just like the MLB forced Sony to make their Sony San Diego’s MLB The Show games multi-platform. And Disney has an incentive to do so once their current contract expires (more money and mindshare).
They didn’t screw anything up, Sony simply is the less powerful party in that partnership, just like it will be the less powerful party when negotiating with Disney in the future once the current contract expires. It’s literally the same thing, so I don’t know what is so impossible about this happening in the future. Sony is probably thinking the same and getting ready for when the day comes to negotiate with Disney. The MLB forcing Sony to make The Show multi-platform while still making those games themselves (Sony, I mean) means Disney could do the same, and they will probably try to do it as it will benefit them monetarily.
Disney knows no studio will make a Spider-Man game as good as Insomniac, so they won’t give the license to anyone, but what they will do is try to make it multi-platform for bigger revenue. Which is exactly what the MLB has done (as they too knew no one could make a baseball game as good as SIE San Diego).
Unlike MLB, Sony has leverage on the Spiderman IP to an extent. Sure they don’t have the gaming rights per se, but they have it in other places like the movies, so Disney can’t fling their dick on Sony without Sony also being able to push back with their power over a different side of Spiderman IP. In MLB’s case, Sony only makes the game and publishes on their platform, everything else about MLB is all controlled by MLB itself.
There can come a time in the near future where Insomniac isn’t the only dev making mainline Spidey games. That’s the max I can see. Insomniac’s Spidey coming to Xbox is a bit of a hard sell for me.
Disney can easily just Snap Spiderman out of existence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe if desired once the movies cross-agreement expires. They have so many other characters available to pull in.
Let’s not get extreme there. Spider man is a well known character with a huge reach from kids to adults that have grown with the Raimi movies. So it would be a mistake to ignore him right now.
And Insomniac showed that Spider man is better valued in their hands than any other developpers. They care about the character.
So no, I think that both Sony and Disney would lose big time if any of them try to bail out or do anything detrimental to the character or property.
Edit : I don’t even like Spider man as a character, but honestly, he is one of the most recognizable and likeable characters in the movies. You can’t just snapped him out like that.
There are some key differences between MLB the Show and Spider-Man. Sports games are generally on everything. So much so that they are usually the last games to support previous generation consoles, or older. So when NBA, FIFA, NFL, and NHL are everywhere, it makes sense for MLB to want the same thing.
Also keep in mind that sports games earn a huge amount of profit through micro transactions. This profit is limited when you’re locked to one platform.
Neither of these two factors apply to Spider-Man. While not common, we’ve seen exclusive super hero games before and Spider-Man doesn’t use any MTX.
I’m not missing the point because if Sony was “forced” to make the game multi-platform, I believe that they would give up the license and not waste one of their internal studios developing the game but with them owning the movie rights to Spider Man, I honestly don’t see any of this ever happening.
I simply prefer Sony/Insomniac to keep the game the way it is because as an exclusive, I know the quality will be high where as if it’s a third party multi-platform game, the publisher can possibly just make it a cash grab.
At the end of the day it’s insane to even think about it we just don’t know the terms of the deal between sony and Disney sony doesn’t own the game rights its obvious if you look into it but most people don’t because of Sony’s marketing could it happen I have no clue it just depends on negotiations when this current deal ends I heard that it was for 3 games around the time sony announced they bought insomniac another thing I will say Is the same source I heard this from also noted that if sony hadn’t bought insomniac marvel was looking at the games going multiplatform
Of course they did. Out of all the 3 companies, Sony is by far the pettiest. Yeah it’s business, but they’re deliberately doing very aggressive deals just to keep things off Xbox. More so than ever. It’s not 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5 times but so many times. Over and over again. I just want MS to do the same thing. Just on a bigger scale. They poked the bear with Tokyo Ghostwire and Deathloop and we all saw what happened.
When forcing Sony to make MLB The Show multi-platform, the MLB knew there was a risk: Sony saying “fuck this” and dropping the IP, making it impossible to have a good MLB baseball game and losing yearly revenue.
When Disney tries to force Sony to make Spider-Man multi-platform (which they’ll do because they want more money and their characters to reach the maximum amount of people), Disney will know there is a risk: Sony wanting to disconnect Spider-Man from the MCU. But here’s the thing: they won’t be able to do that. They already signed a deal for that. And when that deal expires, Sony will have much more to lose if they decide to leave Disney.
Disney is completely independent from Spider-Man. They don’t have any Spider-Man TV shows in development (becuse they can’t).
Sony threatening Disney to take Spider-Man out of the MCU will go down like this:
Disney: We want you to make future Spider-Man games made by Insomniac multiplatform just like you did with MLB The Show so we can get to more players and get more money.
Sony: We are not gonna do that and if you try to force us to do it we’ll take Spider-Man out of the MCU.
Disney: Cool, do that and not only will get take the Spider-Man game license away from you but we’ll give it to Microsoft so all future Spider-Man games are exclusive to Xbox and PC and PlayStation gets no Spider-Man games from now on.
Sony:
Sony has a lot more to lose than Disney and that is why they are the weak party and they will be the weak party when negotiating a new Spider-Man video game deal with Disney.
Superhero games have always been on all platforms just like sports games. And games like Spider-Man and Miles Morales have deluxe editions, digital deluxe editions, DLC, season passes, collector’s editions, physical “The Art of Spider-Man” books, physical soundtrack albums, merchandise (clothing, Funko POPs, toys, other figurines) and even a remaster (of the game from 2018) and other stuff that generates extra revenue. Not all extra revenue a game gets has to be from MTX. At all.
And guess what? All that extra revenue derived from a game is limited when you are locked to one platform too.
And not only that, but by making the character reach more people Disney will get more money from higher comic and merchandising sales too (which is why it has always made sense to have superheroes on all platforms so they can reach that highest possible amount of potential fans).
After what’s happened with the MLB, there is no reason why Disney would not think “If the MLB has been able to force Sony to do this, we can too”.
And like I said, Disney can threaten Sony not only with taking the Spider-Man video game license away from them but with giving it to Microsoft or to Nintendo so they make all future Spider-Man games exclusive to their platforms. That would hurt PlayStation a lot, and PlayStation is by far Sony’s biggest business.
Players won’t trust Square Enix or Activision to make good Spider-Man games but hey, I think most people would trust The Coalition or Playground or one of Nintendo’s internal studios to make a good Spider-Man game.
Disney could threaten Sony with that and they will accept making future Spider-Man games multiplatform because at least they will still come to PlayStation and won’t be Xbox or Nintendo exclusives, which would give Nintendo/Microsoft a huge advantage against PlayStation.
When it comes to who has leverage here I think some of you are picking the wrong side. Sony has the leverage, hence why they have the current video game exclusivity. What is far more important to Disney right now is having Spider-man in the Marvel cinematic universe. This only happens if they have an agreement with Sony.
Sony currently has the movie rights and will continue to do so as long as they produce a Spider-man movie every 5 years. MS or Disney can try push them to make multi plat games but ultimately Sony can use movie rights to push back. The movie deal between Sony & Marvel has already been pretty rocky so they will not want to risk it ( Especially with how important Spider-man is to avengers post endgame ).
You are kidding yourself if you think any Sony produced Spider-man ends up on Xbox.
I personally don’t see this happening. I’m not 100% sure on this but doesn’t Sony have the rights to Spiderman for use in movies?
If so, Spiderman is far too valuable to Disney within the Marvel films to rock the boat with Sony.
However, these 3rd party deals (Outriders, MLB, Octopath) are certainly going to be used by MS as case studies when pitching for other 3rd party deals. I am certain we will be seeing more day and date 3rd party games into Gamepass.
At this point, it’s almost self fulfilling. Big game(s) drop, subs increase. Some of these subs cancel after the first month maybe but some will stick with it upon seeing all the content so NET subs will always be on the up.
More subs makes it more attractive to 3rd party, which generates more subs and so on.
If Sony threatens with that, Disney can threaten Sony with taking the video game license away from them and giving it to Microsoft exclusively, or even giving Microsoft full access to all of Marvel’s characters in the video game medium in exclusive. If Disney wants to get more money from the Spider-Man games, there are a lot of things they can use to force Sony to make the games multiplatform.
Disney is not some dumb little company. They knew they had full control over Sony when they gave the license to them, otherwise they wouldn’t have done so.
