Contrary to popular belief, Sony doesn’t own Spider-Man, or at least, not all of it. It’s a complicated web of legal jargon, but they only own movie rights. Outside of that, Sony (or anyone else, for that matter) has to pay Disney to use Spider-Man, which includes video games. Apparently, Marvel’s Spider-Man, one of the best-selling modern video game properties, is costing Sony quite a bit of money.
According to one of the leaked slides from the recent Insomniac Games data breach, Sony spent a total of around $226 million to make, market, sell, and produce Marvel’s Spider-Man, as of September 20, 2021. In return, the game had sold more than 21.6 million copies, netting the console manufacturer $793 million in sales. This leaves Sony with over $500 million in profit, which is great, until you realize that it has had to pay Marvel nearly $215 million in royalties for Marvel’s Spider-Man alone at that point.
It’s a large sum that makes it easier to understand why Sony is asking Insomniac Games to cut spending after costing a whopping $300 million to make Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Of course, while naysayers might argue that Sony took a poison pill by taking this deal from Disney, people don’t understand just how big of a system sell Marvel’s Spider-Man is and has been.
Spider-Man is one of the best-selling video game franchises around with more than 41 million copies sold, and a huge chunk of that is because of Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Marvel’s Spider-Man is the best-selling video game on PlayStation 4 by far, with its standalone spin-off/sequel, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, selling over 6 million copies while only needing a fraction of the first game’s budget. This is without considering that both games had sold relatively well on PC as well when their ports eventually came. Between these two games and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the fastest-selling PlayStation game in the console’s history, Insomniac’s first-party PlayStation exclusive franchise could easily make up around 90% of the 41 million in lifetime sales that Spider-Man has made since making his video game debut in the 1980s.
Furthermore, Marvel’s Spider-Man’s sales on PlayStation 4 is higher than The Last of Us: Remastered and The Last of Us Part II combined. It sold more than 2018’s God of War as well.
Peter Parker, Venom, and Miles Morales, are the leading sellers of the current PlayStation generation by far. The only other one that comes close is the fan-favourite father of the year, Kratos. This is how big Spider-Man has been for the PlayStation ecosystem.
So, while Marvel might take home a huge chunk of the total revenue, Sony has a good reason to agree to the deal – it makes both parties a boatload of money.
When you combine it with Insomniac Games’ ingenuity and creativity, Marvel’s Spider-Man has effectively become the biggest portal into the PlayStation brand. Based on how well Insomniac’s games are selling, it doesn’t matter anymore if Marvel takes all the money. Sony will still pocket profit from the sales of other first party games and every third-party purchase that new console owners will buy after they get themselves a PlayStation 5 and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as well as succeeding titles.
Just to put this into further perspective, if Xbox had started its spending spree earlier and bought Insomniac Games a few years back and accepted a similar Spider-Man offer from Marvel, the Xbox One and Xbox Series S/X wouldn’t be laughably outsold by their generational counterparts.
Ironically, Sunset Overdrive, a game that mechanically resembles the gameplay of the Marvel’s Spider-Man games, was exclusive to Xbox One.
Ultimately, it’s no wonder why, despite the costs, Sony is all-in on Insomniac Games and its partnership with Marvel. In addition to the upcoming Venom standalone spin-off, Insomniac is working on Marvel’s Wolverine, Marvel’s Spider-Man 3, and a boatload of other X-Men titles, all of which are exclusive to PlayStation.
