What is going on with this PS5 Spider-Man game?

By Eric Abent/

In the opening minutes of its PlayStation 5 event yesterday, Sony and Insomniac Games announced Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It wasn't immediately clear what Spider-Man: Miles Morales was, and the lone teaser trailer Sony and Insomniac showed off didn't do anything to clear things up. Is it a sequel to Spider-Man? A standalone expansion? A remaster of Spider-Man for PS5 that included new content centered on Miles Morales? It was impossible to say from that teaser trailer alone.

This morning, we thought we'd found some clarity in a Telegraph interview with SIE executive vice president of European business Simon Rutter. "I guess you could call it an expansion and an enhancement to the previous game," Rutter explained. "There's a substantial Miles Morales component – which is the expansion element – but also within the game as well there's been major enhancements to the game and the game engine, obviously deploying some of the major PS5 technology and features."

So, going on Rutter's statement, it seemed like Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a remaster of Spider-Man for PS5 that included new expansion content featuring Miles Morales. Done deal, case closed, matter resolved, right? Well, not so fast – it turns out that Rutter's description of Spider-Man: Miles Morales isn't entirely accurate, at least according to a new tweet from Insomniac Games.

"Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is the next adventure in the Marvel's Spider-Man universe," the tweet reads. "We will reveal more about this standalone game at a future date." So now, you'd be forgiven if you thought that Spider-Man: Miles Morales was a sequel to Spider-Man on PS4, especially after hearing the worlds "standalone game" and "next adventure."

But wait, there's more: according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who spoke to a "person familiar with development," it isn't a sequel either. After speaking to that source, Schreier describes Spider-Man: Miles Morales as "not an expansion or enhancement but a new video game" that's comparable in scope to Uncharted Lost Legacy, which was more or less a standalone supplement to the mainline Uncharted series.

If you're left feeling like this whole reveal was a lot more complicated than it needed to be, you definitely aren't alone. Hopefully we'll learn more about Spider-Man: Miles Morales soon, but for now, expect a standalone game that is smaller in scope than a regular, triple-A game that probably isn't a sequel and also isn't a remaster. Easy, right?

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