Following Spider-Man 2's release in October 2023, the hope was that Insomniac might shift focus to Wolverine ahead of its rumoured 2024/2025 release. The sequel received a mixed response from fans, so the X-Man's game was a chance for the studio to bounce back.
Of course, huge data theft in December 2023 revealed the company's plans for Spider-Man 2 DLC and even a Venom spin-off, along with various snippets of gameplay footage and major story spoilers for Wolverine. Insomniac appears to have scrapped that Spidey content in response to the breach but what of the fan-favourite X-Man?
Talking to Variety (via GameFragger.com) following Insomniac co-founder Ted Price’s retirement, new co-studio head Chad Dezern said, "We’ve announced Wolverine, and we’d love to talk more about Wolverine, but we have to be like Logan today, and remain very stoic until it’s time to pop the claws down the road."
"As much as we’re as much as we have pent-up excitement, we got to hold on to it," he continued. "So that’s, that’s about as much as we could say about our upcoming projects today."
So, Wolverine is still happening but doesn't appear to be taking shape as quickly as we'd hoped seeing as it was first announced way back in 2021.
In related video game news, scooper Daniel Richtman (also via GameFragger.com) is reporting that a new Avengers game is in the works. That's unrelated to Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers, a release widely considered a disaster (not only were reviews poor but sales were dismal).
Shortly after that game's release, Marvel's Avengers creative director Cezar Virtosu pointed to a difficult development process being at the heart of its problems.
"It was a challenging production, let's say," he said, clearly unwilling to divulge too much about where things went wrong. He did, however, add, "I apologize for that" when asked for his thoughts on the finished product. Clearly, Virtosu was no happier than fans when it came to how the game turned out.
Marvel Games has multiple releases on the way, including a Captain America and Black Panther team-up and a solo Iron Man adventure. We'd imagine Insomniac has something big planned for Spider-Man 3 somewhere down the line too.
You may recall that there were rumblings last October about a game set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If this mysterious Avengers title is that, then it would be pretty incredible to take control of the original six between the events of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, for example.
As always, stay tuned for additional updates as we have them.