Sony Allegedly Pressured Insomniac To Make Budget Cuts Despite Spider-Man 2’s Success

Insomniac Games’ recent successes are supposedly still not churning out as much profit as Sony would like. The leaked documents confirm that the company wants Marvel’s Spider-Man dev to make budget cuts for its upcoming games in the future. As discovered by Kotaku, the detail was found by examining the recently leaked internal docs exposed because of the ransomware hack.

Sony is looking for ways to reduce budget costs with the devs’ each new arrival. While all of Marvel’s Spider-Man games have been quite full of improvements over the others, the sacrifice behind the scenes was the increased budget cost for them. However, it was not the case with Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the spin-off entry that took only $90 million to develop and still produced large profits compared to others.

We have to make future AAA franchise games for $350 million or less. In today’s dollars, that’s like making [Spider-Man 2] for $215 million. That’s $65 million less than our [Spider-Man 2] budget. […] is 3x the investment in [Spider-Man 2] evident to anyone who plays the game?” reads leaked slides from earlier this year.

One of the leaked docs has touted the potential of Marvel’s Venom, saying it can bring huge profits with a low budget as well. The docs described it as another spin-off title to come out between Spider-Man 2 and 3. Its story would be a bridge to Spider-Man 3 and feature the same length as Miles Morales.

The gossiped spin-off is rumored to have the same price as Miles Morales, standing at $49.99. One of the early leaks mentions a q2 2025 release, but a newer slide labeled 2027 as its launch year.

Sony also paints a grim picture for Insomniac Games in the leaks. Besides the budget cuts, a reduction of 50 or more devs is also mentioned to meet its goals.

Slimming down Ratchet and cutting new IP will not account for the reductions Sony is looking for. To remove 50-75 people strategically, our best option is to cut deeply into Wolverine and Spider-Man 3, replacing lower performers with team members from Ratchet and new IP.”

Related Content:

• Insomniac Was Once Developing Sunset Overdrive 2; Was Canceled In Favor Of Spider-Man.
• Insomniac Games Once Planned An Online Spider-Man Title, Artwork Leaks.
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 Has Already Sold Over 6.1 Million Copies, Reveals Leak.

We suggest taking these rumors with a grain of salt. Insomniac Games was hit with a massive data breach last week because of a ransomware attack. The studio’s plans for the next decade are now out in the wild; it wants to develop multiple Spider-Man and X-Man titles for years to come. Some of the entries include Marvel’s Venom, Spider-Man 3, and the like. The slides also leaked a canceled multiplayer Spider-Man game in the process.