Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 breaks sales record despite PS5-only launch
The PlayStation 5 has been on the market for nearly three years, and Sony is slowly beginning to phase out support for the PlayStation 4 in its first-party exclusives. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, the sequel to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man and its 2020 expansion Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, was released a few days ago, and it has broken a 24-hour sales record despite being a PS5-only title.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is the fastest-selling PlayStation game ever for a 24-hour period. Customers purchased 2.5 million+ copies of the game on launch day; the first game sold 3.3 million copies in the first three days, despite having access to a much larger player base that the PlayStation 4 enjoyed at the time.
It remains to be seen how many sales the new web-slinging action-adventure will be able to achieve in one week. God of War: Ragnarok currently holds a record of 5.1 million sales in the first week after launch, but it was a cross-gen title that was released for both the PS4 and PS5. Still, seeing the initial momentum of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, there’s a good chance it will claim the first-week sales record as well.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 continues the story from the first game and its expansion, with players now having the option of playing as both Peter Parker and Miles Morales. The plot once more involves multiple iconic Spider-Man villains and brings back characters seen and heard in the previous two titles. It also introduces characters that weren’t seen in the first game, including Kraven The Hunter as the primary antagonist, Sandman and Venom (who is also playable).
The game has received critical acclaim, with a Metacritic rating of 90 and 9.0 from critics and players respectively at the time of writing. Developer Insomniac Games has also received praise for taking advantage of the PlayStation 5’s hardware to push higher-quality graphics (including ray tracing for all resolutions and visual modes) and to massively reduce loadtimes (fast travel is near-instant, and so is switching between the two Spider-Men).
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is priced at $69.99 for the standard edition and $79.99 for the Digital Deluxe edition (which includes unique suits, 5 starting skill points, early unlock for gadgets and suits, and additional Photo Mode items). It is also available in a bundle with the PlayStation 5; the upcoming PlayStation 5 Slim will have a similar bundle.
Image credit: Sony/Marvel
