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  The spinoff game has a Christmas, winter setting. [credit: Sony ]

Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales , the spinoff to the popular and critically acclaimed 2018 PlayStation game Marvel's Spider-Man , launched on Windows PCs today, just three months after the original game did, too.

The game was developed by Insomniac Games (previously best known for the Ratchet & Clank franchise), PlayStation, and Marvel Games. This port is being done under the stewardship of Netherlands-based studio Nixxes Software, which was acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment last year. The studio focuses on ports as well as supporting other studios' productions in various ways.

The PC port contains all the content from the original game. On top of that, there are several enhancements, including support for Nvidia's DLSS 2 and DLSS 3, as well as DLAA and Reflex, and AMD's FSR 2.1. There are expanded settings for ray-traced shadows and reflections, and as with the previous game, strong ultra-wide and multi-monitor support.

Enlarge / All images in this review were personally captured by Sam Machkovech on various PCs, unless otherwise specified. (The game's handy "photo mode" helps on this front, though such images are still representative of real-time gameplay.) (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

In two days, the 2018 hit game Marvel's Spider-Man will break out of its console exclusivity and land on Windows ( Steam , EGS ) as arguably Sony's biggest PC port yet. We knew Sony was bullish about selling more games on PC in the current fiscal year , but we didn't expect a critically acclaimed gem like Spider-Man , which previously drove console sales as a PlayStation exclusive, to make the transition.

The thing about PC ports, of course, is that they have to work on a wide range of machines. As of press time, the Spider-Man version we tested doesn't necessarily surpass the mix of stability and impressive technical performance that developer Insomniac delivered on dated PlayStation 4 architecture.

Such complaints might be moot when Spider-Man launches on Friday, August 12 —and we sure hope so. At its best, this game does whatever a PC rig can, delivering ultra-wide ratios, super-charged graphical settings, higher frame rates, and increased ray tracing depth. But while it looks great on a super-charged PC and impresses on hardware as weak as a Steam Deck, it's tough for me to comfortably recommend Spider-Man on midrange gaming rigs.

Enlarge / We knew Sony was bullish about PC game launches in 2022, but we didn't think Spider-Man would be included. Great news for PC gamers. (credit: Sony / Insomniac / Nixxes)

On Thursday, Sony's latest game-filled "State of Play" presentation included fantastic news for PC gamers: Its critically acclaimed Marvel's Spider-Man is coming to Windows PCs on August 12. The news arrived shortly after a leak suggesting that Returnal and Sackboy: A Big Adventure are not only coming to PC this year, as well, but will include toggles to make them look and perform better than their PlayStation 5 versions.

The event was jam-packed with impressive-looking new games, though most of them have been given 2023 release dates (and everything shown on the upcoming PlayStation VR 2 platform is thus far undated, as that new peripheral still doesn't have a release date). As PC gaming enthusiasts, however, we want to start with the PC-specific news.

Why Sony's PC bullishness makes us believe today's leak

Marvel's Spider-Man launched on PlayStation 4 and PS4 Pro in September 2018 and landed near the top of our favorite games of that year. Its PC port, which we are still surprised to see, given what a PlayStation console sales driver it's been, will arrive on PC courtesy of Nixxes, a development studio known for some of the best console-to-PC ports of the past decade. Sony acquired Nixxes in early 2021 , but up until today, that acquisition hadn't yet borne fruit, as Sony's other recent Windows game releases didn't credit Nixxes in any way.