Xbox Turned Down Deal to Make Exclusive Marvel Games

05/23/2022 11:07 am EDT

A new story has come about revealing that Xbox once had the opportunity to make exclusive video games with Marvel but ultimately turned down the partnership. In recent years, Marvel Games has been mostly synonymous with PlayStation, primarily thanks to the release of Marvel's Spider-Man, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and the upcoming title Marvel's Wolverine. Even though PlayStation and Marvel might be primary collaborators at this point in time, it sounds like Xbox could have worked with the comic book giant but decided to focus on its own projects instead. 

As told in the book The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2, Marvel Games executive Jay Ong talked about the company's process of looking for new partners to create projects associated with the brand back in 2014. In short, Ong wanted Marvel to move away from largely only creating licensed games that would be associated with movies. As such, he approached both Xbox and PlayStation about the idea of working on a game with Marvel due to the fact that both companies had a lot of money and resources to invest in a title. Xbox ended up turning down this pitch to focus on its own properties while PlayStation ended up agreeing to a deal that resulted in Spider-Man. The rest, as they say, is history. 

In hindsight, this is surely something that those at Xbox might regret. Marvel's Spider-Man, in particular, has been one of the biggest games in the history of PlayStation and surely helped sell a multitude of PS4 consoles during the last generation. However, at the time when Marvel would have pitched this idea to Xbox, Microsoft was in a much rougher spot with its gaming brand. The Xbox One had gotten off to a bad start and Xbox internally was going through some pretty big shakeups. With all of this in mind, you can understand why Xbox likely wanted to focus on getting its own issues in order before looking to make such a big game with Marvel. 

Do you think that this was a decision by Xbox that will end up haunting the company well into the future? Or could you see Xbox finding a way to work with Marvel Games on a new project right now? Let me know your thoughts on this whole matter either down in the comments or message me on Twitter at @MooreMan12.

[H/T ResetEra]

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.