If you’re anything like me, you were pretty excited by the reveal of the next Sonyverse Spider-Man game, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Not only is it a follow-up to 2018’s Marvel Spider-Man, but it’s apparently going to be ready to ship later this year!
That’s a crazy bit of news, even if it was sort of unclear at first what to expect from the title. Most weren’t sure if it was an expansion or a standalone game, and there was some confusion as to whether it was a PS5-exclusive or if it would also be available on the PS4.
Personally. I was mostly concerned with the latter, as I assumed Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales would certainly get a PS4 version. It seems like a huge financial gamble to ask this title to shoulder the weight of moving new consoles — especially considering there is as of yet no actual price tag on the PS5. Of course, it’s starting to look like a PS4 version won’t be happening.
I have yet to see much reason to buy a PS5 when it launches other than the prospect of playing Miles Morales, but that alone isn’t enough of a carrot for me. I would rather buy a PS4 version and wait until the PS5 has proven itself a worthwhile investment.
And it’s not as if Sony wouldn’t sell a ton of copies if it were available on the PS4, because they certainly would. And assuming Miles Morales was built using the same engine as 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man, they would theoretically only have to move a few shaders to get it to run smoothly on the PS4.
Of course, there’s the PS5’s DualSense controller providing some haptic Spidey-sense, but I have my doubts as to how much that will actually be an improvement over the DualShock rumble that the PlayStation line has been using for decades.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Miles Morales will definitely move some units, both in games sales and console sales. But there’s certainly a huge audience that are going to hold off on a PS5 purchase until the game lineup is a bit beefier. To withhold Miles Morales from those people seems to be removing a whole lot of folks from the game’s initial install base.
Not only are we currently unsure about how much the console is actually going to cost (analysts are expecting $499, but there’s no official word on that yet), but the U.S. specifically is also in dire economic straits. Millions of Americans are unable to guarantee they will be able to make rent or feed their families three months from now, (thanks in no small part to the circus that passes as our federal government), and the prospect of plopping down several hundreds of dollars on a new console just to play Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales seems a bit farfetched.
All that said, I have yet to see the game in action, beyond what was shown in the trailer. So it could very well be that the game is just so spectacular that there is no conceivable way it could ever be played as intended on current-gen hardware. If that is indeed the case, then fair enough, I say. But I do have a feeling that Miles Morales might not be the system-seller that Sony thinks it is, and I hope this is a prospect that doesn’t ultimately lead to the downfall of a great game series that has potential to spare.
