Marvel’s Wolverine sold an estimated 1.9 million copies in its first three days on PS5, pulling in roughly $130 million. That already beats Death Stranding 2’s entire PS5 lifetime revenue. And it did this as the lowest-rated Sony first-party PS5 exclusive to date, sitting at a 77 on Metacritic, a score dissected in depth in our Wolverine review roundup. The disconnect between the discourse and the receipts is the actual story here.
Pre-orders did the heavy lifting
Roughly a million of those units were digital pre-orders locked in before reviews landed. Which means the “online mauling” barely touched the opening weekend. The critical consensus around linear structure, repetitive combat, and heavy hand-holding arrived, people read it, and bought anyway. Platform loyalty plus the Insomniac brand plus a decade of Marvel muscle memory is a powerful stack.
Here’s the number that got less attention: the crossover data. Something like 82% of Wolverine buyers had played Insomniac’s Spider-Man titles. This wasn’t X-Men fans finally getting their game. It was Spider-Man’s audience buying the next Insomniac Marvel thing on reflex. That’s a very different signal for Sony than “Wolverine is a hit.” It suggests the Marvel slate sells on developer trust, not character pull, which raises awkward questions if a future Marvel project from the studio lands with a colder reception.
The scent trail patch tells you where this is going
My favorite detail from launch week came from playing it and from watching the community chew through it in real time. Players mocked the ever-present scent trails, calling them “fart gas” all over Reddit, and complained the game kept yanking the wheel during QTEs and motorcycle sections. Insomniac shipped a hotfix within days that reduced the trail opacity and started exploring toggles. A AAA studio responding to a meme within roughly 72 hours is not the old playbook. The game’s rigid, hand-holding design says one thing. The patch cadence says Insomniac knows exactly what it got wrong and is fixing it live.
There’s friction worth watching too. The reported development budget sits around $305 million, so $130 million in three days sounds huge until you do the math on the tail. Analysts expect a lumpier long tail than Spider-Man 2 because of the reception, and the game needs sustained sales to actually turn a profit. Meanwhile 22.9% of revenue came from physical discs, a stubborn number in a digital-first era and notable given Sony plans to wind down new disc production by 2028. People still want a box on the shelf for a Marvel game, apparently even as the UK pays a brutal premium of around £93 for it.
So what’s my read? The launch numbers vindicate Sony’s exclusive strategy on paper, but they also prove that in 2026 the discourse and the commerce have fully decoupled. A 77 Metacritic, weeks of memes, and a $70 price tag on a 10 to 14 hour story didn’t matter to a million pre-order customers. What matters next is word of mouth, because the post-launch tail is where a $305 million bet either pays off or doesn’t. The scent trail patch was a good first answer. Whether Insomniac keeps iterating that fast, and whether the Spider-Man crowd sticks around once the reflex purchase is spent, will tell us more than the launch ever could.
I’d rather have a game that ships flawed and gets patched toward greatness than one that launches polished and forgettable. Wolverine has a real shot at the former if the momentum of these fixes holds.
