Marvel's Spider-Man 2 Gets Massive Player Surge Following Spider-Man: Brand New Day Box Office Triumph

The blockbuster success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day has ignited a huge wave of interest in Sony's video game Marvel's Spider-Man 2, with players reinstalling or purchasing the title in droves.

According to fresh data from Alinea Analytics, Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 has moved an additional 316,000 copies since Brand New Day's massive release, raking in $11 million across PlayStation 5 and Steam in under two weeks. This past weekend, the game hit 1 million daily active users for the first time since its launch week, marking a 2.6x boost in daily engagement compared to pre-movie levels. Not bad for a title that came out nearly three years ago! The timely update adding two new Spidey suits, including Tom Holland's fresh costume from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, likely contributed to the spike. IGN's guide now lists all of Spider-Man 2's suits—up to 92, including photos and a checklist!

Alinea's Rhys Elliott noted that Spider-Man 2 has now sold 18.2 million copies, with 92% on PS5, translating to roughly $1.2 billion in sales revenue over three years—something even Tom Holland's Spider-Man would tip his hat to.

"This is one of the clearest transmedia halo effects we've ever measured," Elliott said. "But it's still an untapped opportunity. Right now, these boosts happen mostly by accident. Brand New Day landed almost three years after the game. Imagine if a platform holder or publisher aligned a major game with a major film. If only dev timelines and delays weren't so hellish...

"Movie and 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 few publishers making movies AND games in the same IP, surely one of these has to line up. I'd love to see that impact."

Sony and Insomniac are gearing up to launch Marvel's Wolverine in September, and, as Elliott points out, there's no Wolverine movie to accompany it. Perhaps when Hugh Jackman inevitably dons 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 surge to what Spider-Man 2 is seeing now.

I'm among the many who reinstalled Spider-Man 2 after watching Brand New Day. I beat the game at launch, but my eight-year-old son, a huge fan of the movie, asked if there were any cool Spider-Man games on our PS5. So I downloaded it (took a few hours!) and let him start his own save. We've had a blast swinging through New York—I'm enjoying it all over again—and calling out those finishing moves that Brand New Day director Destin Daniel Cretton clearly borrowed for the film's action scenes!

This also got me thinking about Insomniac's next Spider-Man game. We know Marvel's Spider-Man 3 is on the horizon. Will its launch sync up with the next Tom Holland Spider-Man movie?