Man, developers just can’t catch a break. This is especially true for Insomniac. First, the whole puddle thing happened before Marvel’s Spider-Man came out. You probably heard about that one. Now, with the DLC episodes and new costume unlockables rolling out, an oddly large and (more so) loud sector of the fanbase, of people who have played and enjoyed this game, are screaming about a particular suit not being available in the game. Things only got sillier and louder when a social media rep from Insomniac actually responded.
In honour of PlayStation's 30th birthday yesterday in the US, data company Circana has dug out figures showing the top 20 best-selling PlayStation video games ever (date-range Jan 1995 to July 2025). Don't get too excited.
This is a great reminder of how game sales have become more concentrated in a smaller number of games/series over time. In the PS1/PS2 era a game was a success if it sold a million or a few million copies. The GTA games (3/Vice City/San Andreas) were pretty big outliers in selling as much as they did during the PS2 era. So in the minds of a lot of gamers something like FF VII feels like it was as big of a PS1 game as God of War 2018 was for PS4, but in reality far fewer people bought it (though it has obviously reached additional people through remasters, etc.).
What this says to me is, not many people are buying a PS to play PS exclusives. Like so many false narratives, like Xbox gamers don't buy games! It seems Playstation as a default system is a vanilla system to play call of duty, Minecraft, GTA games and a sports games.
if you look back into the PS history, it has always been the 3rd parties who sells the most games. it was just that the PS1 and PS2 were so dominant that many of those 3rd party games were exclusives. so, back during the PS1 and PS2 days, the strategy was "to sell as many consoles as possible in order to sell more 1st party exclusives" to ride on that wave. The strategy to push many 1st party exclusives to sell consoles only started with the PS3 when many of those prior 3rd party exclusives went multiplat but more accurately, it started with the PSP.
Sony saw with the PSP, which was being trounced in sales by the DS, that 3rd party exclusives are hard to come by if you're not dominating the market. So they started building more 1st party games and when the PS3 were facing difficulties in sales, they knew they had to rely on their own to differentiate the PS3 from the 360. So the strategy back then changed to "release more 1st party exclusives in order to sell more consoles".
the only manufacturer that is still consistently selling their hardware to play 1st party exclusives, is Nintendo, and that was because they gave up the armrace for power thus they can't rely on 3rd parties anymore as all multiplats play better on competing consoles. AND that's also why they are the most ominous in going after emulators and also patent trolling!
so, you're not wrong there, but not an "aha!" moment or anything. it has been this way since the last, at least, 15 years for Playstation.
@zerobalance
So... what this tells you is that Call of duty, being the absolute check writer that it is, has been outsold by Last of us, God of war, 2 Spider man games..... Saying Playstation exclusives doesn't sell is like saying call of duty doesn't sell because they have outsold some of iterations. Does that make sense to you?
A modder has added multiplayer to Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on PC, giving us the closest thing to the canceled The Great Web project.
A Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered multiplayer mod is in development by the community, and there's even early gameplay footage.
Regular gamers just demand good,finished, non buggy games for a good price. Anything extra is appreciated as long as it's a good deal. And wasn't held back to be sold as extra.
Entitled gamers expect everything handed to them for free. Whine when you don't give them more than what they should expect and become unruly by raging over social media but would never speak up in person.
Insomniac was nice about creating the suit and I'll enjoy it with the others. But I wasn't expecting it when I already have plenty to choose from and still haven't unlocked them all. Is Insomniac now supposed to make every Spider-Man suit in history from comic to 70s live action tv shows, cartoons and movies?
When you constantly try to deceive your consumers, it's only natual that the consumers are going to become a lot more sceptical about your games.
The gaming industry bought all this on themselves. They were the ones that broke the trust, it's up to them to put it right, which they won't do because all they are concerned about these days is the money.
Entitled gamers? yes, they exist, but the majority of them are just fed up with being treated like nothing more than a cash machine.
Honestly? Some developers gamers do, others we don't. I demand more from the companys like Bethesda, Konami, EA, Take Two, and Activision. Not the groups they buy to develop their games. Microtransactions are balls, paying for content that was already in the game is balls, introducing pay to win systems, using MP as the focal point of creating games, pushing out buggy games that always need to be updated, treating their employees poorly. Tons of issues with the way games are created.
I was just hoping for the alien costume. That was the only one I wanted as an alt costume, and was disappointed it never became a thing. Oh well, I got over it. Cus I'm wearing my big boy pants.
No we give too many a free pass like they are are friends and then get half finished games full of microtranactions. Demand better stop accepting mediocrity and terrible practices. Gamers have themselves to blame. Stop being weak minded people. They are in business and some devs show you how it should be done. Even on a low budget like hellblade. No excuses. Too many lies and broken promises and people who pander