Following the highly successful release of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (labeled as the fastest-selling PlayStation first-party game ever), Insomniac is now busy working on Marvel’s Wolverine.
Originally announced during September 2021’s PlayStation Showcase, the project’s origins were explained with the following statement by Insomniac’s Ryan Schneider (Head of Franchise Strategy & Studio Relations):
Back when we were working on Marvel’s Spider-Man, there would be times where all of us—Insomniac, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and Marvel—would brainstorm together about the future beyond the web-slinger. And even in those early discussions, Wolverine continually came up as the character we’d be really stoked to work on together. Fast-forward a couple years and we’re suddenly standing in front of Sony Interactive Entertainment and Marvel formally pitching a PlayStation 5 game starring the adamantium-clawed Mutant!
At the time, Schneider said Marvel’s Wolverine would be directed by Brian Horton (creative director) and Cameron Christian (game director), who previously led the development of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
Not much else is known in an official capacity, other than it’ll be set in the same universe as the Spider-Man games, opening up to a potential cross-over. Earlier this year, Jeff Grubb shared some rumors suggesting that Marvel’s Wolverine will be a ‘wide linear’ type of game featuring a mature rating and targeting Fall 2024 as the launch window.
Indeed, according to the ArtStation profile of concept artist Hung Nguy, Marvel’s Wolverine is targeting 2024. Of course, release dates for videogames are always fickle and there’s always a chance for a delay, but Insomniac has accustomed its fans to an incredible pace for a triple-A studio.
Perhaps even more interesting is that Nguy’s profile also mentions Sony Bend’s next game with a 2025 release window. As you’ll recall, Bend Studio had wanted to make a sequel to Days Gone, but unfortunately, Sony did not give the green light. Later, we learned from former leads that the game didn’t do well enough in critical reception for Sony’s standards despite selling quite well.
Bend was put to work on The Last of Us multiplayer game for a while before being allowed to pursue another project. In June 2022, they said this would be a new IP featuring open world systems from Days Gone and the addition of multiplayer support.
