Marvel’s Spider-Man was a huge hit for Insomniac Games on the PS4, and the is now considered one of the best adaptations of the New York webslinger in gaming, and one of the best designed superhero games of all time. Spider-Man: Miles Morales will follow the second Spider-Man and launches with the PS5.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is under a ton of pressure. Not only does the title have to launch a console as a PS5 exclusive in direct competition with the Xbox Series X this holiday season, but it has to follow up the first game’s success with a brand new protagonist and likely set up another story for Peter Parker in the future. Here are all the challenges Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will face when it comes out this November 12.
Sales and Story
The original Insomniac Spider-Man game not only rendered the character in unprecedentedly photorealistic graphics and told a tight story, but was a huge financial success for Insomniac and Sony; Spider-Man broke sales records for Sony. The game sold an average of 1.1 million copies a day for its first three days. Spider-Man for PS4 was the fastest-selling game Sony had been involved in the development with, narrowly beating the soft reboot to God of War which release the same year.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales is likely to be able to match those numbers, or at least provide an impressive comparison. The PS5 is projected to be the best-selling console of the upcoming generation, and with Spider-Man: Miles Morales attached as the launch title, it’s very likely that a lot of gamers will choose the new Spider-Man game to kick off their adventures on the PS5. The projected good sales, however, speak little to the reception of the game, and Insomniac is still under a lot of pressure to deliver on expectations when players unwrap the studio’s latest title.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ story has a few big challenges. First, it needs to make Miles as compelling as Peter Parker was in the first game, while also making him distinct. Ever since the release of the Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles has been a household name for fans beyond the comics, but Insomniac will still have to make their own distinct and slightly more mature version of Miles stand out on his own.
Not only that, but it’s likely that Spider-Man: Miles Morales will have more to tackle with than its own story. The Sony Spider-Man games are now established as a series, and with Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Miles Morales, fans will be expecting a strong self-contained story as well as a good set-up for the next main Spider-Man game. Peter Parker’s redesign has already been met with some criticism, so the pressure is really on to make the anticipation of his next story as compelling as Miles’.
The Price Hike
There is a final aspect to the pressure on Spider-Man: Miles Morales. The Ultimate Edition of the game will be one of the first to confront gamers with the new price hike for triple-A games. Fortunately there will be a cheaper version of the game which only includes the new content, while the Miles Morales Ultimate Edition is actually a pretty great deal, including a remaster of the 2018 Spider-Man game for the PS5.
The pressure is high, but if there’s any studio-franchise combo likely to deliver, it’s Insomniac’s Spider-Man. Sony chose the game to launch the PS5 for a reason, and while the jury will be out on its reception until release, many fans will be highly anticipating the new title as they await the release of the PS5.
Spider-Man: Miles Morales releases November 12 on PS4 and PS5.