• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Marvel's Spider-Man series at more than 33 million units sold as of May 2022

Oh My God Reaction GIF by 9Now


Very impressive.
d9a1e39101aad0af1554766e826bd725d7e5f2b4.gif
 

Gandih42

Member
Most big publishers on PC disagree as they keep investing on DRM. What is a fact is how DRM has no negative impact on sales (not even online only has that effect, as shown by how Blizzard does it).

A big part of GaaS taking over PC is piracy and now this will influence the direction PlayStation will move towards. Sad.

The idea that people pirating wouldn't buy the game is bullshit, given that even games that require expensive hardware to run are still pirated just as much. Sony is handling their releases on PC pretty poorly in that regard and it will likely have a negative impact on their willingness to invest in single player games in the long run.


Piracy is a temporary problem, as the bulk of the money, specially in the case of single player games, is made close to release. Denuvo will usually delay piracy for many months and can be removed once it is beat by crackers.

Do you have any data handy that shows DRM has a significant positive impact on the profitability of a game? I don't have anything to prove you wrong, I can only say that my gut feeling is that the positive effects of DRM is negligible at best. And at worst causes brand damage and is harmful to your customers experience. I'd love to have more insight if you've got anything :messenger_smiling_with_eyes:

As for GaaS, even if we assume that you're right that DRM is efficient, don't you think that the prevalence of GaaS has more to do with the fact that it makes games MUCH more profitable than most traditional single player games have any chance of being? I'm with you on that the growth of GaaS is sad. I have little interest in those types of games and I feel very strongly that it is harmful to game design. But I wouldn't blame it as much on lack of DRM, which I would consider a positive.
 

Unknown?

Member
They will get a lot more sales on PC. Good stuff. Sony finally sees the light. We PC gamers are a patient bunch and I'm sure many of us have been waiting for this. It was only ever a matter of time.
No most of them probably got cheap PS4s(because PC gamers are cheap apparently?) and played them already because they aren't fanboys like you. Most PC sells will be double dipping.
 

SLB1904

Banned
No most of them probably got cheap PS4s(because PC gamers are cheap apparently?) and played them already because they aren't fanboys like you. Most PC sells will be double dipping.
Yeah this guys are hilarious. Thinking that people will wait 2 years to play the games they want lol
 

Roman Empire

Gold Member
Kinda high for a Niche title, am I right?

I guess Marvel struck gold with Sony if they keep on doing their triple-A heroes games. It hardly can get more cinematic than what Sony has been doing with their big games. Still, 33 million is a bigger number of sales than I expected (I'd guess 22-26 million copies max). Great numbers to make a marketing push for the guaranteed true sequel with Spiderman 2.
 

Topher

Gold Member
They will get a lot more sales on PC. Good stuff. Sony finally sees the light. We PC gamers are a patient bunch and I'm sure many of us have been waiting for this. It was only ever a matter of time.

Sony saw "the light" two years ago when they said they were going to start putting games on PC. And speak for yourself on the waiting bit. I'm a PC gamer as well, but I'm not waiting around for PlayStation games to come to PC. PlayStation games are nearly always a day one purchase for me. And frankly, I can see more PC gamer buying PlayStation consoles when the next Spider-man launches instead of waiting for the port. That's just how good these games are.
 
My guess is ~22-23MM for Spider-Man, ~10-11MM for Miles Morales.

Spider-Man 2 will sell a lot. As will Wolverine. SM2 will probably be the biggest selling SM game to date. Wolverine will probably sell over 10M. However, the most interesting piece of this, to me, is the relationship between Marvel and SIE. Obviously it's a mutually beneficial relationship right now. Marvel probably collects similar to what Lucas does, i.e. ~20% of revenue and wants to push for PC ports. Sony has to ensure any new Marvel games will sell at least 20% more than their own IP so that the math works out. I wonder if Sony and Marvel keep expanding the relationship or if Marvel, or Disney, will get greedy and try to up the royalty fee, require multiplatform releases, or take the license somewhere else.
 

Bragr

Banned
Certainly gonna add a few million to that number on PC. Insomniac struck a gold vein that is gonna be rich for years to come.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Certainly gonna add a few million to that number on PC. Insomniac struck a gold vein that is gonna be rich for years to come.
The sequel is going to be explosive.

I'm looking forward to Wolverine to see how they handle mainly melee combos and the like. Hoping for lots of environmental interaction as well.
 

Lognor

Banned
Sony saw "the light" two years ago when they said they were going to start putting games on PC. And speak for yourself on the waiting bit. I'm a PC gamer as well, but I'm not waiting around for PlayStation games to come to PC. PlayStation games are nearly always a day one purchase for me. And frankly, I can see more PC gamer buying PlayStation consoles when the next Spider-man launches instead of waiting for the port. That's just how good these games are.
You're a PS gamer so you don't count. I'm talking about PC gamers. We are patient. We will wait. Look at sales of GOW, for example. We waited years in lieu of buying a PS4 to play it. We will do it time and time again. So you speak for yourself, as a PS gamer.
 

geary

Gold Member
That is true, but the games were not near the quality of Insomniac's Spider-man.
Probably, but also different tech available...Now with some nice cutscenes you can impress anyone.

No but they had the Raimi movies which were pretty damn big as well
Yea, but MCU Spiderman (3 movies) sold about the same as the other 5 before cumulated

Spiderman is a lot more present in the pop-culture now than was before and thats due to MCU and Insomniac's SP benefit from that.
 
Last edited:

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Makes me wonder why Sony isn't putting Denuvo on their games given that they are single player only and easy targets for piracy.
Building good-will first, and when you're releasing 4+ year old games, the break-even point is really low.
Watch that song&tune change if the day-1 people have been clamoring for happens.

Denovo is only a temporary measure at best.
That's all it needs to be - full price sales are very front-loaded across pretty much every game/genre.
Once you reach deep-discounts, piracy becomes increasingly less attractive as well.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
And at worst causes brand damage and is harmful to your customers experience.
That 'negligible at best' cuts both ways - brand damage even in the worst fallout cases has barely registered on bottom-line, no matter what people online tell themselves.
But that aside - yes there is data that shows the impact on first weeks/months of sales (which are the only time most games sell meaningfully at full-price) - that's part how services like Denuvo market their product after all (contrary to popular belief - publishers don't make these decisions blindly or on a whim - DRM costs money, and paying for nothing is not a model any game-pub particularly enjoys).
Reliability of said data is still subject to some debate, but it's not completely unsubstantiated.

As for GaaS, even if we assume that you're right that DRM is efficient, don't you think that the prevalence of GaaS has more to do with the fact that it makes games MUCH more profitable than most traditional single player games have any chance of being?
GaaS started 20 years ago in markets where consoles had negative tie-ratios and PC was at best, unviable as a platform - and turned the game-industry from being small to non-existent into highly profitable practically overnight - and within 10 years, many of those markets were outperforming some of the biggest Western territories for revenues.
Yes - the model encourages more spend than traditional monetization, but it's also immune to piracy and it successfully monetized audiences that grew up on it.
 
Last edited:

DarthPutin

Member
That's all it needs to be - full price sales are very front-loaded across pretty much every game/genre.
Once you reach deep-discounts, piracy becomes increasingly less attractive as well.
Dunno about first day, but FFVII Remake was cracked very fast, and I believe that one had Denuvo.
 
I'm shocked about that one lol I really thought it would sell under as some side game or something, but that game is moving just as much units. Insomniac + Sony is going to be out here breaking all sorts of fucking records with Spiderman 2 and Wolverine lol

I'm happy this game is moving gangbusters and I hope that publishers take note.

Putting a fucking IP that is popular in game IS NOT FUCKING ENOUGH. The game MUST BE GOOD, it must be by developers that can...get this, MAKE GAMES lol We've seen so many fucking Transformer type, Fast And Furious type games its not even funny and seeing them flop got lots of us just believing those IP can't work as games, when lazy, bad development might have more to do with those poor sales. Look at all the hype behind that Harry Potter RPG coming out, its not solely just cause its in that universe, its about WHO is making it too and we believe it will be a quality game. If those things don't align, of course those games would flop and continue to do so. Maybe the likes of EA, Activision etc will take those licenses more seriously seeing this.

I think it was a lack of other games available combined with the success of the first game as well as the success of spider-verse. I actually think Spider-Man 2 and Wolverine are in trouble for other reasons (trouble defined as selling as well as Spider-Man and Miles Morales).

Spider-Man 2 is going to have a small user base initially being only on PS5.

Wolverine is going to be an experiment for Insomniac. Huge departure from what they have done before.

I don't think publishers are really taking notes here. We already saw what can happen with IP with the Arkham series, that hasn't lead to consistency though.
 
Building good-will first, and when you're releasing 4+ year old games, the break-even point is really low.
Watch that song&tune change if the day-1 people have been clamoring for happens.


That's all it needs to be - full price sales are very front-loaded across pretty much every game/genre.
Once you reach deep-discounts, piracy becomes increasingly less attractive as well.
That actually makes a lot of sense, I believe they were just being cautious. I don't think Sony has revealed their entire PC strategy yet, PC is going to be key for Sony's success in markets like China.

EA, Ubisoft, Epic, Amazon, MS, Activision/Blizzard, R*, CDPR, etc, all have their own launchers and yet Sony is the one that is not going to attempt that? Hard to believe.
 
Last edited:

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Sony saw "the light" two years ago when they said they were going to start putting games on PC. And speak for yourself on the waiting bit. I'm a PC gamer as well, but I'm not waiting around for PlayStation games to come to PC. PlayStation games are nearly always a day one purchase for me. And frankly, I can see more PC gamer buying PlayStation consoles when the next Spider-man launches instead of waiting for the port. That's just how good these games are.
If Sony first party games are such big draws for the PC crowd, they would had all converted to PS systems during the past 20 years.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
There’s this thing called owning multiple systems.
Depends which side of the narrative you're on. One side says exclusives draw in gamers. Yet the PC crowd with their uber rigs dont seem to care about consoles. Then if you release too many games on PC, the console crowd will shift over and go PC. Now youre bringing up option #3 which is rare: console/PC combo.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Depends which side of the narrative you're on. One side says exclusives draw in gamers. Yet the PC crowd with their uber rigs dont seem to care about consoles. Then if you release too many games on PC, the console crowd will shift over and go PC. Now youre bringing up option #3 which is rare: console/PC combo.
high quality GIF
I think only on forums people are this extreme, in real life they’re happy to own multiple systems and play on them when they feel like.
 

Topher

Gold Member
If Sony first party games are such big draws for the PC crowd, they would had all converted to PS systems during the past 20 years.

Not sure what you read. I didn't say Sony first party games were "big draws" for the PC crowd. I said these games coming to PC could entice PC gamers to buy PlayStation instead of waiting for ports. How that translates to something 20 years ago, I have no idea.

Depends which side of the narrative you're on. One side says exclusives draw in gamers. Yet the PC crowd with their uber rigs dont seem to care about consoles. Then if you release too many games on PC, the console crowd will shift over and go PC. Now youre bringing up option #3 which is rare: console/PC combo.

Great games draw in gamers, exclusive or not. You have a group of PC gamers who don't care about consoles and you have a group of console gamers who don't care about PC. Then you have those of us who game on both. And no, I don't think we are nearly as rare as you suggest. Frankly, I think you are far too hung up on the "narratives" of the "sides".
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Not sure what you read. I didn't say Sony first party games were "big draws" for the PC crowd. I said these games coming to PC could entice PC gamers to buy PlayStation instead of waiting for ports. How that translates to something 20 years ago, I have no idea.



Great games draw in gamers, exclusive or not. You have a group of PC gamers who don't care about consoles and you have a group of console gamers who don't care about PC. Then you have those of us who game on both. And no, I don't think we are nearly as rare as you suggest. Frankly, I think you are far too hung up on the "narratives" of the "sides".
I didn’t mean rare in reality. I game on PC too with my low end laptop.

I meant rare as an option #3 narrative on forums.
 
Obviously this is crazy good but it can't be that much higher than Horizon or god of war.

We know Miles Morales did at least 6.5. Million but it likely is about 8 to 10 Million.

So Spiderman ps4 is likely about 23 to 25 Million at this point.

25 Million would be about right but 23 Million would honestly be a bit less than I thought.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Probably, but also different tech available...Now with some nice cutscenes you can impress anyone.


Yea, but MCU Spiderman (3 movies) sold about the same as the other 5 before cumulated

Spiderman is a lot more present in the pop-culture now than was before and thats due to MCU and Insomniac's SP benefit from that.

Why is it so hard for you to credit Sony and Insomniac for the latest sales of the current Spiderman games?
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
The last Spider-man game I liked was Spider-Man 2 on PSX

These new ones don't hold my attention at all I'll give them another shot when they come to PC
 
Top Bottom