Sony Parks Spider-Man 2 on Extra After 28 Months

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 joined the PlayStation Plus Extra Game Catalog on February 17, 2026, 28 months after its PS5 launch. Sony had already sold the sequel at full price and put a Windows port out on January 30, 2025. Extra and Premium members then got the download, and the earlier Insomniac games were already sitting in the same catalog.

Nick Maguire, PlayStation’s vice president of global services, said in June 2025 that first-party games go into Plus at 12 or 18 months, or older, and not on day one. Spider-Man 2 was older. The month also carried a racer that still sits on a 37 Steam score, a cluster of short story games, and, three months later, a higher Extra sticker for new buyers.

Spider-Man 2 Reached Extra on a 28-Month Clock

Adam Michel, Sony’s director of content acquisition and operations, posted the February list on February 12, two days after the leaker billbil-kun said the sequel was coming. Sony confirmed it around that week’s State of Play. The full lineup available on February 17 was Extra’s last window, not a launch-day drop.

Marvel set the PS5 launch date of October 20, 2023, as a console exclusive. That is 851 days before Extra, which rounds to 28 months. Maguire’s public range is 12 or 18 months or older. The “or older” clause covers a flagship that had already had a full-price run, discount cycles, and just over a year on Windows.

We’ve sort of stayed true to our strategy across the board, where we’re not looking to put games in day and date.

Nick Maguire, Vice President of Global Services, Sony Interactive Entertainment

He said the mix is four or five indie games on day one plus first-party titles that are 12 or 18 months old or older, and that the balance is working across the platform. God of War Ragnarok reached Extra in January 2025. Horizon Forbidden West arrived about a year after its February 2022 launch. Spider-Man 2 sat longer than both talking points, and longer than the Windows port’s first year.

SPIDER-MAN 2’S WINDOWS

1. October 20, 2023: Insomniac Games launches Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 as a PS5 exclusive.
2. January 30, 2025: A Nixxes port puts the game on Windows.
3. February 17, 2026: Extra and Premium members can download it from the Game Catalog.
4. May 20, 2026: New Extra monthly plans in the United States rise to $16.99.

Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales were already in Extra, the first of them from the tier’s 2022 launch set and the remaster from a later catalog add. February completed the console trilogy inside the subscription. Maguire has also said there is a right time for a game to go into Plus, when it can reach people the boxed sale missed. That is the Extra bet in one line: wait until the people who will pay have paid.

Nine Extra Titles, One Premium Extra

Extra received nine games. Premium received those nine plus Disney Pixar Wall-E, a PlayStation 2 platformer based on the 2008 film. Streaming of digital PS5 copies varies by region and country, and Michel’s post warned that Extra and Premium lists can differ by storefront. Check the PlayStation Store on the day if a title is missing in your country.

FEBRUARY 2026 GAME CATALOG

Wall-E follows the last working trash robot in the year 2700, then a trip across space after Eve arrives. The solo campaign is puzzle platforming. Up to four players can run mini-games, from timed space races to battles. That is the Premium extra for a month whose Extra headliner was a 2023 first-party sequel. The gap between the two paid tiers is still the Game Catalog, not the classic.

Solar Crown Comes With a 37 on Steam

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is the other billed Extra lead, a shared open-world racer from KT Racing and Nacon that launched on September 12, 2024, 17 months before this drop. Sony’s catalog copy notes it arrives 13 years after Test Drive Unlimited 2, with more than 30 car makers, from 1960s dailies to hypercars, and a Streets-versus-Sharps clan war on a live Hong Kong map. The pitch needs a crowd, because the game is built as a massively multiplayer racer that wants a permanent connection.

The crowd did not show up at launch. Steam’s concurrent peak was 5,305 players, and the Mostly Negative Steam review score is 37 out of 100 from 12,200 reviews, 4,514 of them positive and 7,686 negative. OpenCritic’s critic average is 55, with 8 percent of critics recommending it. Those are different piles (players versus critics) and both are poor for a $49.99 racer that still lists at that price on Steam.

SOLAR CROWN ON PAPER

• Steam score: 37 out of 100 from 12,200 reviews, listed as Mostly Negative.
• Critic average: 55 on OpenCritic, with 8 percent of critics recommending the game.
• Launch peak: 5,305 concurrent Steam players on the September 2024 debut.
• Extra wait: 17 months from the September 12, 2024 release to the February 17, 2026 catalog add.

Luke Reilly scored it 5 out of 10 and pointed to forced online requirements, uneven AI, a thin car list, and chore-like progression. Mike Channell wrote that the technical problems, online and in performance, do a disservice to a novel, detailed world. Early access already buckled the servers. Extra does not rewrite those reviews. It does give an always-online Hong Kong a free PS5 population that the paid launch never found, which is the rehab use of the catalog: park the tentpole for retention, and park the wounded live game for bodies.

The Short Games Extra Members Skip Buying

The rest of Extra that month is shorter, quieter, and easier to finish than a Marvel open world. These are the games a lot of Extra members would not buy at sticker, which is the other half of Maguire’s mix: independent titles that meet a wider audience inside the plan.

FOUR STORY GAMES IN THE DROP

• Neva: Nomada Studio’s follow-up to Gris, an action adventure about Alba and a wolf cub in a land that is rotting around them, with a top critic average of 87 and 95 percent of critics recommending it after an October 15, 2024 launch.
• Season: A Letter to the Future: A bicycle road trip in third person, built around recording tools that catch sound, art, and the stories of people living through a coming cataclysm.
• Venba: A narrative cooking game about an Indian mother who moves to Canada in the 1980s, restoring a damaged recipe book and holding branching talks with her family.
• Echoes of the End: Enhanced Edition: An Iceland-flavoured action game about Ryn, a vestige with old magic, walking glaciers, volcanic depths, and ruins with the scholar Abram after her brother is taken.

Neva is the one in that group with a critic pile that matches a headliner. It is also the one Extra members can finish in an evening, which is the catalog’s other job: put a $70 sequel on the store tile, then fill the month with games people stream, sample, and actually complete. Rugby 25 sits beside them as the sports odd one out, a club-to-country rugby sim on PS5 and PS4 with no critic file in this round of reporting worth leaning on.

The loud Extra argument in February was not Neva and not Solar Crown. It was the simpler claim that one month of Spider-Man 2 covered the cost of the tier for anyone who had not already bought it. People who had paid for deluxe editions the year before were the ones left holding the receipt. Trophy hunters treated the add as a platinum they had been waiting to start. That split is the Extra window working as designed: the sale is over, the port has had a year, and the remaining audience arrives through the plan.

Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2, Then Twisted Reflection

Capcom’s two turn-based Rider games landed on PS4 in the same Extra batch. Monster Hunter Stories puts you with monsters instead of hunting them, and this Extra version is fully voiced in Japanese and English, with a museum mode for music and concept art. Stories 2: Wings of Ruin casts you as the grandchild of the legendary Rider Red, guarding an egg that might hatch a Rathalos with the power to wreck the world.

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection launched on March 13, 2026, at $70, on PS5, Switch 2, Xbox Series, and PC. That is 24 days after Extra added the first two games. Sony did not call the pair a demo for the sequel. The calendar still reads that way: two PS4 catalog games, then a $70 third entry. Anyone who wanted the combat grammar, the Monstie raising, and the tone could spend late February in Extra and walk into Twisted Reflection already fluent.

That is a third Extra use in one month. Last window for a first-party sequel. Player injection for a live racer that missed. Cheap rehearsal for a paid sequel that was three weeks away. None of those jobs requires Extra to be Game Pass. They require Extra to feel busy enough that the middle tier still looks like the one worth paying for.

Why Extra Cost $2 More Three Months Later?

On May 20, 2026, new PlayStation Plus prices went live in select regions. Sony cited ongoing market conditions. Existing members kept their old rate unless the plan lapsed or changed, with Turkey and India as the exceptions. Annual US prices stayed put, including Extra at $134.99 a year. The short plans moved.

NEW US MONTHLY PRICES, MAY 20, 2026

Three-month Extra rose from $39.99 to $43.99. The monthly Extra price went up $2 for new United States buyers, after a February catalog whose lead game had already been out for 28 months on PS5. Essential rose by $1. Premium rose by $2. The annual plans were the remaining bargain, which is another way of saying Sony wanted people locked in for a year before the short-term rates moved.

February’s Extra list did not cause the May hike. It did sit in the three months before new Extra buyers were asked for $16.99 instead of $14.99. A $70-class Insomniac sequel, a Hong Kong racer that needed bodies, two Monster Hunter RPGs ahead of a $70 follow-up, and a set of short story games is the kind of month a company can point at when the middle tier costs more. Maguire’s line about the right time for a game to enter Plus is also a line about the right time to ask more for the shelf that holds it.

For Extra members who had never bought Spider-Man 2, February 17 was the date the plan felt paid off. For people who had bought the deluxe edition in 2025, it was a sour one. Nacon got a PS5 population its Steam peak of 5,305 never resembled. Capcom got a 24-day runway into Twisted Reflection. Sony got a catalog screenshot, then, in May, a higher monthly Extra price for the next person who signed up.