On Monday, Crystal Dynamics announced that Peter Parker’s superhero alter-ego would join Earth’s Mightiest Heroes this September as a PlayStation exclusive. This has sparked controversy about Spider-Man’s state of exclusivity in Marvel’s Avengers. In a meeting with various media outlets, the head of the studio, Scot Amos, responded to a question about the hot topic from Newsweek.
“We love the idea of being able to bring this character to the PlayStation players and so as far as everybody goes, dude, we just announced Hawkeye less than a week ago, we have two characters announced within a matter of five days the future is bright,” Amos told Newsweek. “People will get fixated on one thing as opposed to you’re going to have hundreds of hours of content in years of storylines coming ahead of us and new worlds and regions and new heroes and more stuff we haven’t even announced yet, but I really do think people look at this and say ‘yeah, okay, we get that we understand the business behind that,’ but in general we’re making this game for everybody we want this to be the place you get to play those superhero fantasies out with my Avengers team that’ll continue growing with new characters, characters you haven’t you even guessed yet that are gonna come to this roster down the road and new regions as well, so I am very excited for what the future holds for everybody on all platforms.”
Hulk smashing in Marvel’s Avengers
Much of the exclusivity is due to the trickiness of who owns what property. Just like with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios has a deal with Sony to cast Tom Holland in its movies as the neighborhood friendly crime fighter, but the power is in the hands of the latter company. As Sony owns PlayStation, the iconic hero remains under its control.
Crystal Dynamics is not making any statements on whether any of the unannounced characters will be exclusive to other platforms.
Outside of the Marvel’s Avengers Spider-Man controversy, Amos also spoke about cross-play. While cross-gen will exist for gamers playing Marvel’s Avengers on PS4 or Xbox One, then transition into the next-gen console will keep their progress. Playing with friends on other platforms is something the studio is exploring but is refraining from making any promises.
Marvel’s Avengers is currently in beta. The full game will launch on September 4 for Xbox One, PS4, PC, Google Stadia, and next-gen consoles.
