VGChartz's Evan Norris: "At New York Comic Con in October, minutes before the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse panel was due to begin, the pre-panel emcee attempted to warm up the crowd with a simple question: which is better, Batman: Arkham or Marvel's Spider-Man? The crowd response was mixed—surprising, considering all the Spidey costumes at Madison Square Garden that day—with about half going for Rocksteady's Batman series and the remaining half opting for the web-slinging PS4 exclusive. I remained quiet, having played only the Arkham games. Now, a couple of months later, with Spider-Man under by belt, I can say confidently that Batman: Arkham—specifically, Arkham Asylum—is the superior game. In fact, nine years after the fact, Arkham Asylum remains the very best superhero game, Spider-Man's critical and commercial successes notwithstanding."
Discover the best Batman Arkham games ranked from Asylum to Knight, including Origins, VR and more, with a focus on combat, story, and world design.
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.
This trilogy (not including Origins) was the best super hero video gaming I have played. Even if the third installment got a little ridiculous with the whole Batman Beyond Return of the Joker type plot and the more than obvious identity of the actual Arkham Knight, it was still a great ride from the beginning to end.
Personally I enjoyed Arkham City more, but I thought the main 3 games were all great. Origins though was pretty meh.
Everyone hates on Origins but I feel like it took everything and sort of enhanced it yeah it was more of the same but overall very good especially the little detective bits. I want a Batman noire with nothing but being a detective and the occasional fight.
Regardless of which one is the better overall game i still think Spiderman is alot more fun to play. Swinging around the city never gets old.
Agreed Arkham Asylum was the best one. I completed I think %80 of the trophies for that game. Man that as fun. the releases after that were more the same, they have it tough trying to top that gem.