No X-Men games for Xbox players until at least 2036, huge data leak suggests

Insomniac Games fell victim to a ransomware group Rhysida, which currently published roughly 1.7 terabytes, or 1.3 million files from the servers of the Sony-owned game developer.

Now, we are slowly learning the first secrets hidden in some of the documents. Among those are the details on licensing for games using popular Marvel-owned characters.

To the disappointment of Xbox players, the details are rather grim. As reported by Windows Central, you most likely won’t be able to play any X-Men game on Xbox until at least 2036. The reason is the exclusive license currently owned by Insomniac Games.

Per this exclusive deal, detailed in the terms which Windows Central has viewed, Marvel cannot announce any new X-Men game until December 31, 2035. This includes not only consoles, but also Windows PCs or cloud gaming services.

Insomniac Games is currently developing an X-Men title dubbed Marvel’s Wolverine, announced back in 2021 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. As reported by Polygon based on the data breach, the title is expected to be released in 2026.

But although we are talking about a PlayStation 5 exclusive, PC gamers might have better luck than Xbox Series X and S players. That’s because past Insomniac Games titles Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales were eventually released for PCs, and we expect the same for Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Still, there might actually be a hypothetical chance of playing for Wolverine on Xbox in the coming years. The licensing deal allows Marvel to use X-Men characters in “multi family”, Avengers-like team-up games. Don’t expect a standalone X-Men game for Xbox anytime soon, though.

Ransomware attack on Insomniac Games is not Sony’s first dealing with hackers. In 2011, PlayStation Network was hacked and taken down in response for over three weeks. Then in 2014, Sony did upset some North Koreans with their upcoming comedy movie The Interview, heavily mocking their leader Kim Jong Un. Sony refused to stop the film's release and a large amount of its internal documents were published by North Korean hackers.

Source: Windows Central, Polygon