Executive vice president and head of Marvel Games Jay Ong has revealed in a book that both Xbox and PlayStation were approached about making Marvel video games but only Playstation accepted the offer.
PlayStation has an exclusive Spider-Man franchise, and an upcoming Wolverine game. And over at Xbox, there are no new Marvel games developed by an Xbox studio. This is because according to Ong, the company declined Marvel’s offer, opting instead to focus on its own IP.
The book, Steven L Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games Vol 2, has an excerpt where Ong explains this deal and how it led to Marvel prematurely terminating a contract it had with Activision to make Spider-Man games. Ong says that Marvel was unhappy with Activision’s Spider-Man titles and the two companies came to an agreement to end the licensing deal early. Ong said that Activision then asked him, “What are you going to do with this IP after you get it back?” Ong said, “I’m going to find a better home for it,” to which, Activision replied, “Good luck finding your unicorn.”
Xbox turned down the offer after Marvel Games reached out asking, “We don’t have any big console deals with anyone right now, what would you like to do?” PlayStation, however had an answer though.
“I sat down with these two execs from PlayStation third-party, Adam Boyes [now co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios] and John Drake [now vice president of business development for Walt Disney Games], in August 2014, in a conference room in Burbank,” Ong says in the book. “I said, ‘We have a dream that this is possible, that we could beat [Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham franchise] and have one game at least and maybe multiple games that could drive adoption of your platform.”
The rest is history.
Source and Image Credit Gameinformer
Filed Under: Gaming News
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