On Monday, developer Crystal Dynamics announced that Spider-Man will be coming to Marvel’s Avengers sometime next year, but only on PS4 and PS5. Fans were understandably upset. Now, studio co-head Scot Amos has explained the reasoning behind the exclusivity deal. Kinda. Not really.
Amos could have just dodged the issue entirely by saying something like “we don’t comment on the details of business deals with our hardware partners.” Instead, Amos decided to go for it in an interview with ComicBook during a media roundtable earlier this week, and it is truly something to behold:
So the beauty of Spider-Man, and what Spider-Man represents as a character, and as a world is...again, it comes back to the relationship with PlayStation and Marvel. We happened to be...once you can execute and deliver, when it comes down to choices of where and what Spider-Man can be, that’s a relationship question that PlayStation absolutely has the rights to, that as you guys know, with Sony’s ownership there, and Marvel with Sony saying, ‘Hey, this is something we can do. This is something we can do on this platform.’
What?
And so, what we do as creators is say, ‘This is an opportunity that we can make something unique, and fun, and awesome that we all...you just talked about Black Widow, and to be able to have that experience. So we love the idea of being able to bring this character to the PlayStation players.
And the coup de grâce:
But I really do think people will look at this and say, ‘Yeah, okay, we get that, we can understand the business behind that’, but in general, we’re making this game for everybody.
Nailed it.