A trailer for a game named Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Great Web has leaked online, revealing what appears to be a live service, online adaptation of Insomniac Games’ superhero series. Gameplay looks largely familiar to the studio’s single player titles, except the big twist here is that Being Greater Together involves playing alongside up to four other friends.
Judging by the trailer, there would have been a Spider-Verse aspect to the action, as you’d be facing off against various villains in different versions of New York City. We won’t host the trailer here as we suspect this has emerged as part of the Insomniac Games hack, but you shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking it down if you want to see it. Clearly this is more of an early concept than anything close to being complete, and the simplicity reflects that.
Co-op superhero outings have had a bit of a rough time lately, with both Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failing to meet expectations. We reckon a co-op Spider-Man title could work relatively well, but it’d need a lot of variety to retain interest. We’re not sure there’s enough meat in this particular trailer to sustain a long-running live service.
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I would love the behind the scenes of what happened here, it seems like a sure-fire hit if Insombian were behind the wheel, or at least another dev using their framework, mechanics etc.
All I can imagine (and hope) is that maybe there were overlaps between the ideas in this project and another Spidey game in the works, making the development of both redundant.
The rumoured Spider-Verse game from Insomniac would be a natural fit for co-op, and having just seen the leaked concept trailer for The Great Web, it all felt very Spider-verse esque what with the dimension jumping, spider-noir sequences etc. To be honest, I think I'd prefer that art style for a co-op Spider game - would help differentiate it from the mainline series.
Fingers crossed that's what's happening.
EDIT: Realised I typed 'Insombian' instead of 'Insomniac', went to edit, decided I preferred 'Insombian'.
Unfortunately GAAS are not for me.
They usually require much time and a group to ride endgame contents regularly.
I'm sorry to see this project cancelled, but at the same time I think I was not a right target for it.
I am really glad that this won’t see the light of day. Sony really need to keep their single player franchises as just that, single player! Not everything needs to be made into a live service. I personally prefer single player stories that I can enjoy by myself anyway! It’s good to see that developers can make good games in the live service vain like Helldivers 2 of course, but so many developers are making huge mistakes with their titles, Destiny and Suicide Squad being the top (bottom) two..
All that's in the trailer is some SM2 combat, except there's a few additional playable characters.
And yet I'm seeing twitter posts saying the game looked "pretty much finished" 🤦♂️
Sony should double down on their live service games and force all of their studios into making a one ecosystem game like Fortnite or Roblox. /s
@Voltan Hahaha. The trailer was pretty much just remixed SM2 gameplay with a bit of dev tinkering, skins. In a sense they were looking at a finished game, just one that's already been released. You'd think the 'concept' part would give it away.
@Bamila that's an interesting idea.
This is a shame because I play mostly live service games since I have great taste in everything
I never play games online, but this would be the exception as long as it was good. Oh, well.
@Jamesblob I agree entirely with you, but this is way too sensible for Sony. What would really happen is they would take the money they make and funnel it into more GaaS games and all the people like me and you would not see the single player extravaganzas that we prefer!
Looks more like a concept trailer that they presented to higher ups to see if they can get the go ahead.
Personally I don't think it looked all that interesting so I'm not surprised it got cancelled.
More cancelled games than upcoming these days 😅
@Bamila Perfect idea! They should make one huge multiplayer GaaS for those few who want it and stop bother the world with another GaaSes and finally focus on singleplayer. But this simple logic doesn't meet with Sony's lust for flushing money down the toilet...
It does look like Jim Ryan forced all of Playstation Studios to live service.
@djlard no no no, they need to kill off live service so that traditional multiplayer games (y'know no battle passes and FOMO bs, seasons, & always online requirement, etc) can live again
seems like the only games that have single and multiplayer together like the old days is COD, street fighter/tekken, NBA2K, and...i dont know!
Doesn't have to be live service, but a co op Spiderman might have been good.
Although this seems a reasonable idea, it’s a good point that the two recent DC co-op/MP projects have been met with tepid response.
Good news, thankfully another load of ***** that gets canned.
Spider-Man gameplay is barely interesting enough to last the amount of time it takes to 100% the map, so a Live Service version seems like a bad idea.
I have heard time and time again that the resources required to make these a hit are straining and lead to a complete refocus on the studios goals and ambitions.
Maybe if this happened, in the next 10 years, we'd only see this, Venom and Wolverine from Insomniac. Look at Rockstar with GTA V. I think it's a case of "would we want to give up what we are known for, for the next decade"
As an exercise, I've been trying to keep track of all these live-service games Sony said they were making - initially 12 but we know that some have been axed now.
So we've got Naughty Dog's Factions thing - Axed
This alleged Spider-Man LS - Axed
A Twisted Metal LS - Axed
Not sure if Helldivers 2 counts?
Guerrilla are making a Horizon LS, still alive I believe.
Does Foamstars count?
There was some truly forgettable LS announced at the start of that State of Play maybe a year ago - the terrible SoP.
Bungie are still making Marathon.
Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head, though I'm sure I've missed some, and some from that list probably don't count.
@HamKnight Fairgame$ and Concord, and we’re at like 9 of them that we know about if Foamstars and Helldivers count. I believe Helldivers would count, but not sure about Foamstars. You’ve got to wonder if we’re getting another presentation soon, as the two I listed above were originally scheduled for this year, but we’ve seen next to nothing about them. Fairgame$ in particular was something the Sony execs hyped a lot… until we saw it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were absolutely shocked with the reception the GAAS titles got and reevaluated some of the financial risk in producing the titles.
Another Live-Service game cancelled?
THANK YOU BABY JESUS!
@somnambulance That was it - Fairgame$ was the forgettable one that I, uh, forgot about lol. Don't think I ever heard of Concord in the first place!
@HamKnight Concord was revealed in the same event as Fairgame$, it's the one with the space cheeseburger but nothing about the game was really revealed outside of it releasing in 2024.
@Grumblevolcano I must have completely excised that one from my memory!
@Grumblevolcano It does kind of seem that way. And it seemed like once Sony saw the backlash that he was swiftly 'retired' and existing IP live service projects were cancelled.
This is one I'm glad is cancelled. It's a live service so the chances of Gwen or Miguen having actual personalities was very low. Also as much as I love Insomniac Spiderman and even knowing I play the game once a year (this year including Spiderman 2) I don't see how this would be profitable, how people would play this game for more than 3 months, would be just a waste of talent.
If Gwen, Miguel or other Spiders make their debut in Insomniac games I want it to be as big as possible.
With all due respect to the work that was put into it before it was canceled, but I'm glad it didn't pan out.
Releasing it as GAAS was not the way to go, just look at the other flops in the genre...
I wonder though : what ever happened to classic multiplayer ?
Why does every multiplayer now has to be GAAS?
Maybe they should have scrapped the GAAS parts and make the multiplayer as a ~40$ one-time payed DLC.
Depending on the included content (and it looked like they had some ideas, like coop fighting threats in different dimensions... or at least it seemed that way) I think people would have been eager to get it and "partake in communion" to quote a famous line.
Look at The Last Of Us Part 2 - it's the best example of this. What if they had done the Factions MP as a 1 time pay multiplayer DLC instead of going greed-forward for GAAS... A lot more people would have bought it and played the living hell out of it.
Should I add to this the inevitable increase in PS+ subscriptions (needed to play online) ?
But no, instead they went for the GAAS even though many didn't / don't want it.
And in the end devs scrapped all their hard work, gamers ended up with a cancellation of fun gameplay, and received instead a needless Remaster of a game that barely released less than 4 years ago.
Good job Sony! Great vision your leadership possesses...
@Bamila
Factions 2 could've been the greatest ever made. Live service reputation sucks, but online multiplayer was fun before all this garbage.
Factions 1 is one of the best multiplayer games ever made. 2 had so much potential, but all people see is live service bad.
Really sorry to everyone else in the comments but I got to say this actually looked good and I would have definitely played this.
Speaking of co-op superhero games, man, I wish I could get X-Men Legends 2, or even an Ultimate Alliance on the PS5 😔 Either would be an instant purchase for me.
I don't dare to dream of a new Legends or Alliance though lol. Be too sad seeing characters that should be unlocked by playing, instead part of a paid pass or just straight up $5+.
Reminds me of the avengers.
We are better off without these. The single player games are vastly superior experiences.
@Czar_Khastik just spent 15 minutes fixing my login so I could like this comment. Quality comment as per usual
@Boucho11 Thanks for the appreciation and time, I see you're a man of culture as well
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