If you were hoping to replay Spider-Man: Remastered on your PS5, we bear some unfortunate news.
We’ve known for a while that Insomniac’s Spider-Man was coming to PS5 alongside the stand-alone Miles Morales expansion. Questions have lingered over a potential upgrade path for Spider-Man PS4 owners moving to PS5. Fans who already own a PS4 copy hoped it would carry over when they picked up their new console.
So we’re good, right?
According to Sony, no, we’re not. To play Spider-Man: Remastered on their PS5, fans will need to purchase the Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition. This premium-tier version bundles the remastered original with the new standalone expansion. Sony goes on to say that it has no plans to release Spider-Man: Remastered as a single package. Here’s Sony’s statement in full:
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered is an enhanced version of Marvel’s Spider-Man, and is included as part of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition for the PlayStation 5. In addition, players who purchase Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PlayStation 4 can upgrade at no additional cost to the PS5 version of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and can take advantage of a paid-upgrade to download Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered.
There are no plans currently to offer Marvel’s-Spider-Man: Remastered as a standalone. Players with a copy of Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 can purchase Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition to experience Marvel’s Spider-Man: Remastered on PS5. Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 also will be backwards compatible on PS5.
Bummer. Let’s talk about it.
The decision is an odd one, to be sure. From a business standpoint, of course Sony would prefer you pay full-fare for the same games over and over — Nintendo have been doing this for 25 years and it seems to have worked out fine for them. From what we can see, Spider-Man has also been omitted from the list of games included in the PlayStation Plus Collection.
Adding insult to injury, the Xbox Series X, the PlayStation 5’s direct competitor, features Smart Delivery. Smart Delivery transfers recent last-gen games straight to your next-gen hardware. Some will be optimised to run on the Series S and Series X hardware, and others won’t. If Spider-Man were available on Xbox, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. That’s how easy the problem is to solve. It makes Sony’s decision to dig their heels in on this issue all the more baffling. Why let Miles Morales players upgrade for free, but not owners of the original?
Ultimate Edition versions of Spider-Man: Miles Morales currently hold an RRP of AUD $124.95 at EB Games. JB Hifi has gone .95c cheaper at a flat $124. You can preorder it now for launch day.
