After a leaked listing pointed to Spider-Man being a PlayStation 4 exclusive in Marvel's Avengers, the news was later confirmed...much to the chagrin of Xbox owners! Given Sony's relationship with Marvel (and the fact the Spider-Man franchise is exclusive to PlayStation), it was to be expected, but it's still a move that's generated its fair share of controversy.
In an interview with ComicBook.com, Crystal Dynamics Co-Head Scot Amos addressed that head on, and explained that it simply boiled down to Sony having exclusive access to the web-slinger.
"[It] comes back to the relationship with PlayStation and Marvel," he explained. "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.'"
You can't blame them for taking advantage of that, especially when it will likely increase sales on the PlayStation 4 (it's already been confirmed that owners of the title will get a free upgrade on PS5). Amos was then quick to point out that fans should get too fixated on Spider-Man as there's plenty more content to come in Marvel's Avengers following that big Hawkeye reveal.
"[We] love the idea of being able to bring this character to the PlayStation players," he explained. "People will get fixated on one thing as opposed to, 'Oh by the way, you're going to have hundreds of hours of content and years of storylines coming ahead of us, and new worlds and regions, and new heroes," and more stuff we haven't even announced yet."
"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," Amos said. "We want this to be the place you get to play those superhero fantasies out with your Avengers team, that continue growing with new characters, characters you ain't even guessed at yet."
So, while PlayStation owners are definitely at an advantage, there will be something for everyone, and when the PS4 is the higher selling system, this sort of thing is pretty much a given at this stage.