PlayStation’s ‘Spider-Man Remastered’ May Be Underperforming On Steam, A Bit

Games PlayStation’s ‘Spider-Man Remastered’ May Be Underperforming On Steam, A Bit Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Aug 14, 2022, 09:53am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Spider-Man Insomniac Sony has a grand plan to bring more of its console exclusives to PC eventually, and this week brought the release of Spider-Man Remastered to Steam , so PC players are able to experience it for the first time. While it’s doing okay, I have noticed something somewhat surprising about its debut on the Steam charts. According to the early numbers here, Spider-Man has peaked at a number lower than God of War, back when it debuted on PC.

According to SteamCharts, Spider-Man peaked at 64,893 concurrent players, while God of War peaked at 73,528 players. Spider-Man is above Horizon Zero Dawn, which peaked at 49,582, albeit that game was years older when it debuted on PC. Spider-Man SteamCharts What’s the issue here? God of War is a great game, right? It is! However, all sales figures indicate that Spider-Man (with Miles Morales) is PS4’s best-selling exclusive release, the #1 to God of War’s #2, including beating out its launch day sales records.

Horizon Zero Dawn is third. What do you think? One Community, Many Voices. Be the first to comment comments posted on Forbes.

Add your voice now. Join the Conversation This wasn’t exactly a huge mystery, as even if God of War is a GOTY winner, Spider-Man features one of the most famous heroes in the world across any medium, plus Insomniac’s game is great. So a more accessible hero and game means more overall sales.

Except with Steam here, where at least so far, it’s debuting behind God of War. So what’s going on here? A few theories. God of War’s popularity has snowballed since release, between its GOTY wins and the declaration that some may consider it one of the best games of the whole past generation, if not the best.

So that may have inspired a surge in PC interest so players can finally get to experience what all the fuss is about. Game spending right now is down. Inflation is hitting hard, and pretty much all spending has decreased in the gaming sector with few exceptions.

If we were back in 2020 or 2021 when gaming spending was surging, we would probably see higher numbers from Spider-Man here, which is charging $10 more than God of War did in the first place. I’m also told that regional pricing for Spider-Man is a lot worse than past releases, for some reason. Finally, I just don’t know if Sony promoted Spider-Man’s release on PC as much of an “event” as when God of War or Horizon came to PC.

This may be anecdotal, but I just noticed that I didn’t hear nearly as much about it until it was live, and I’m curious if the marketing spends were equivalent, or dramatically different. So, it could be any number of things, but yes, I think it’s unusual that Spider-Man isn’t topping God of War here, and can’t make it inside the Steam top 10 list. We’ll see if maybe there’s a late surge that propels it higher, but for a game like this, the debut may be as high as it gets.

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