Pour clear water into the glass, this question has come up so many times and in so many places that it is time to clarify once and for all.
Already in the case of the 2018 Spider-Man game, the above question has been raised by many, and now it has become clear that Marvel’s Avengers, which will be released on September 4, will only be included as a PlayStation-exclusive DLC character in early February 2021. We will be able to play on 5 consoles directing the good old mesh. But why is that, Sony really owns Spider-Man’s appearance of any kind, including video player appearances?
Spiderman in the cinema
Actually, the answer is just a short word: no. In its distressed situation, the comic book publisher Marvel anno sold exclusively the film adaptation rights of the comic book heroes it owned. That’s when the X-Men and Fantastic Four went to Fox, Hulk to Universal, and the friendly and popular Spiderman to Sony.
Since 2002, only and exclusively Sony has made Spider-Man movies, although the latest version of the popular hero is now an integral part of the MCU, the Marvel film universe.
This has been resolved by Spider-Man cinemas and Marvel films being set in a common world, while the netweaver’s own films are being shot and distributed by Sony, while the team films where Spider also appears are made by Marvel Studios. They must have remembered that there was a break of smiles between the two studios last year, but eventually the matter was resolved.
And everywhere else
But other than film rights, all other property rights are there at Marvel, and that has never changed. They own the comics, they can make the TV series (they’ve produced quite a few Spider-Man cartoon series in recent years), and they’re certainly responsible for the video games as well. The first Marvel game, the 1982 Atari 2600 has been released by Spider-Man since that place.
Of course, they have long-term contracts with certain publishers in the past, such as Marvel games, which Activision produced in the 2000s, but this is pretty much the same agreement that currently exists between Electronic Arts and Lucasfilm – as EA is now responsible for Star Wars games, but this has not yet become the right of any character, they have only laid down for a given time that they will develop games in the far-far galaxy, but still any concrete, final decision will be made by Lucasfilm.
So Marvel Entertainment’s video player division, Marvel Games, handles player affairs. It was they who approached Sony with a request that they want to order a PS4-exclusive Marvel title that brings the usual Sony quality.
The decision is understandable, as the Japanese publisher is among the best in single-player, open-world action-adventure games, although obviously not everyone here was happy with the exclusivity. Sony has entrusted the Insomniac Games team with the new task ahead of them, and they, so the developers themselves, have decided to make Spider-Man the protagonist of their own game. This is how the 2018 Spider-Man was born.
Now, however, with noble simplicity, Square Enix is making a Avengers game for Marvel Games, Marvel’s Avengers, which is being developed by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montreal. It’s a multiplatform title, appearing on PC, Google Stadium, PS4, Xbox One, and, after the generational change, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X as well.
Sony palmed into this finished recipe by contacting either the publisher, Square Enix, or Marvel Games at once, waving a supposedly chunky check.
Marvel has the final say, so their approval was definitely needed. It’s not even about the protagonist of the 2018 game jumping over here, a whole new Spider-Man will pop up in Marvel’s Avengers. So nothing in the world forced Square Enix or Marvel to do that, Sony could not come up with any claims.
They made a good offer, which the other party accepted. It was all about the money now, not about anything else.
- Developer: Crystal Dynamics
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Platform: Google Stadium, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
- Style: Action, Adventure
- Appearance: 09/04/2020
Thor, Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Widow, who are not modeled after actors in the Marvel Film Universe, appear in Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics, and Eidos Montreal’s Avengers, but professional dubbing takes care of them through exciting adventures. .
