Could ‘Xbox’ Get Spiderman 2?

A lot of talk has been around the fact that we might not ever see a native Xbox port of Spider Man 2. While that might be the case based on what Insomniac is telling fans. Unless Sony does something to make it nigh on impossible, the next generation hardware from Xbox will allow any fan on team green to play a PC version from within Xbox.

There is a lot of work in backwards compatibility and forward compatibility going on. The latter part theoretically points to there being a real chance. Unless, of course. Sony decided to wall that content behind a PlayStation launcher. Which is their right, they would make more money after all.

Sony is known for being very competitive and protective around their content. Not in the same vein as Nintendo, but still that point remains. If the PC version was somehow able to run in a native-like way through some engineering work by Microsoft. This could allow PlayStation games to thrive on Xbox without necessarily being on it. In the sense that, they’ll reap the rewards of allowing that sort of situation to happen.

Obviously a lot of Xbox fans are counting on the fact that this will be a big feature for the next generation. Sony however, has fully learned about this and where they stand on this is going to be interesting to say the least. At the recent State of Play, we all have seen Sony that is still buying up exclusivity timed deals to keep off of Xbox. That tells me that they haven’t really changed their tone surrounding their games.

However, if they ‘did’ allow that in practice to continue ‘as is’ I think it changes the dynamic of how we see ports in the future. Since Sony might see it as common practice and just allow the PC version to play ‘as is’. That’s the interesting thing about all this. Because it’s now really in Microsoft’s hands how these ports play on the new Xbox hardware. Which is in essence, two platforms in one. Three, if you count in the whole focus on handheld where all of this is possible already.

However, for a full-blown Xbox console? I personally believe PlayStation will try and maintain its edge in any way possible. Even if they do not fundamentally block games from going on there. Nothing really is off the table because they want to maintain that competitiveness. However, if they produced a launcher, they could make bank if they go that way with all their content. That could be a big step in a multi-platform approach without even considering that level of competitiveness directly as it fits in with their ‘PC’ strategy. It certainly puts that strategy in the line of fire with how serious they are about it.