Brand New Day? You're Not Alone

The box office phenomenon that is Spider-Man: Brand New Day has sparked a surge of interest in Sony video game Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, with players flocking to reinstall the game or buy it anew.

New data from Alinea Analytics shows Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2 has sold another 316,000 copies since Brand New Day’s enormous launch, generating $11 million across PlayStation 5 and Steam in less than two weeks. This past weekend it saw 1 million daily active users for the first time since launch week, or roughly 2.6x its pre-film daily engagement. Not bad for a game that first launched nearly three years ago! I imagine the well-timed update that added two new Spidey suits, including Tom Holland’s new costume from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, helped out too. IGN’s guide has is a complete list, photos, and checklist of all of Spider-Man 2’s suits — up to 92, now!

Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott said Spider-Man 2 has now sold 18.2 million copies, with 92% of those being on PS5. That makes for roughly $1.2 billion in sales revenue in the three years since launch — something even Tom Holland’s Spider-Man would be proud of.

“This is one of the clearest transmedia halo effects we’ve ever measured,” Elliott said. “And it’s still an untapped opportunity. Right now, these lifts happen mostly by accident. Brand New Day landed almost three years after the game. Imagine if a platform holder or publisher managed to align a major game and a major film. If only dev timelines and delays weren’t so hellish…

“Movie and especially game development cycles are notoriously unpredictable, and syncing two multi-year, multi-hundred-million-dollar productions to swing in together is a logistical nightmare.

“But for the handful of publishers making movies AND games in the same IP, surely one of these has to line up. I’d kill to see that impact.”

Sony and Insomniac are preparing to launch Marvel’s Wolverine in September, and, to Elliott’s point, there is no Wolverine movie to launch alongside it. Perhaps when Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman inevitably wears that comic accurate suit he last wore in 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine (Avengers: Doomsday? Avengers: Secret Wars? The next X-Men movie? Something else?), Marvel’s Wolverine will enjoy a similar boost Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is seeing now.

I am among the many who have reinstalled Spider-Man 2 having watched Brand New Day. I finished the game when it came out, but my son, now eight years old and a big fan of the movie, asked if there were any cool Spider-Man games he could play on our PS5. So I downloaded it (it took a good few hours!) and let him start his own save game. We’ve had a lot of fun swinging through New York (in my case, enjoying the game all over again), and calling out all those finishing moves Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton took inspiration from for the movie’s action scenes!

It’s also made me wonder about Insomniac’s next Spider-Man game. We all know Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 is coming at some point. Will its launch align with the next Tom Holland Spider-Man movie?