Sony says Spider-Man 2 is its "fastest-selling" PlayStation game
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PlayStation exclusive Marvel's Spider-Man 2, developed by Sony-owned Insomniac Games, is now the company's fastest-selling game, Sony said today.
Driving the news: Sony says it sold 2.5 million copies to customers in the first 24 hours since the game's release.
- In the U.S., the basic version of Spider-Man 2 sells for $70, though Sony also sells a deluxe version for $80 and a collectors edition with a statue for $230.
Between the lines: Sony's first-party games are among the industry's most critically acclaimed and are regularly touted by Sony as record-breakers.
- 2018's first Insomniac-made Spider-Man game achieved "fastest-selling" status with 3.3 million copies in three days, per Sony
- 2020's The Last Of Us Part II became Sony's "fastest-selling" game with 4 million copies in three days.
- 2022's God of War: Ragnarök got the "fastest-selling" label from Sony with 5.1 million copies sold in five days.
The intrigue: Sony's highly polished and largely single-player blockbusters are undoubtedly successful but present a tough model for competitors to imitate.
- Poorly redacted documents from the FTC's lawsuit against Microsoft's bid for Activision revealed The Last of Us Part II cost about $220 million to make.
- As a publisher of its own games, Sony doesn't have to pay the platform fee that third-party game makers do to sell their titles on PlayStation (or Switch, Xbox, iOS, and so on). But Spider-Man, being a license, does incur a fee to rights-holder Disney that a PlayStation-born franchise like God of War or The Last of Us does not.
The bottom line: The development and marketing budget for Spider-Man 2 isn't public, but if its first 2.5 million copies sold for at least $70 each, that'd be a $175 million first-day haul.
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