In the action-adventure Marvel’s Avengers, you take on the role of a hero from the Marvel universe. As it has now been revealed, Spider-Man is also a playable character. But only on PS4 and PS5. Many fans are not happy about that at all.
What exactly happened? In a tweet, Sony announced that the character Spider-Man will be part of Marvel’s Avengers. A detailed blog post further describes that his special acrobatics and webs will play an important role.
However, this character will only be available on two platforms: the PlayStation 4 and its successor PS5. There, the character will be available for free at the beginning of 2021. Additionally, more exclusive content for the consoles was announced on August 4th.
Fans of PC and Xbox, however, are left out and are not pleased.
Why is this a problem? Marvel’s Avengers follows a “Games as a Service” approach. The game emphasizes multiplayer and is supposed to evolve over time and be supplemented with new heroes.
Even some PS4 users criticize the decision by Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics, and Sony.
“The last thing this game needed was negative headlines”
What are fans criticizing? On the subreddit for Marvel’s Avengers, negative threads revolving around Spider-Man are currently dominating. There are mainly four major points of criticism in most comments:
- Spider-Man is an iconic character in the Marvel universe that everyone would like to play.
- Heroes play an important role as they bring variety to the gameplay.
- There are supposed to be missions specifically for each hero. So it could be that PlayStation users receive not only the character but even more playable missions. Many are also wondering how Spider-Man will be handled in the storyline on other platforms (via reddit).
- They pay the same price for a different platform but receive less content.
The reddit user Stopthelemurs created a post in which he describes how Marvel’s Avengers is viewed by many.
It is titled “The last thing this game needed was negative headlines” and he explains his statement as follows:
No matter where, people talk badly about the game. I wrote a post in the gaming subreddit that I am really looking forward to the game, and it got many downvotes. The top comment criticized that the game looks terrible.
Marvel’s Avengers is criticized continuously. For some reason, it feels like no one is interested.
And now this. The last thing this game needed was this. The backlash has been intense. Everyone seems to agree here.
The reddit user batbugz writes that a special costume for Spider-Man on the PS4 would have sufficed to make the character more interesting and exclusive there. Completely locking a playable character is “ridiculous.”
Are there also positive voices? There are some players who are simply excited about the implementation of Spider-Man into the game. They are fans and are looking forward to trying out the character.
Additionally, there were some comments pointing out that Sony owns the film rights to Spider-Man. That could be a reason why the character only appears exclusively for PS4 and PS5.
Other players, however, hope that Spider-Man will only remain exclusive on the two Sony consoles for a limited time and will later be released for Xbox and PC. However, there are no indications of this.
When does Marvel’s Avengers start? On August 7th, the first beta tests for Marvel’s Avengers will start, although initially exclusive to the PS4. PC and Xbox users will start on August 14th, and the open beta begins on August 21st. The release is scheduled for September 4th.
Marvel’s Avengers sounds quite interesting despite the criticism and is among the 5 most anticipated multiplayer releases in 2020.
