Crystal Dynamics was the wrong developer for Marvel’s Avengers admits Square Enix

Marvel's Avengers key art — Was the wrong developer picked for the job? (pic: Square Enix)

Square Enix has described Marvel’s Avengers as ‘disappointing’ but insisted it will still make more games as a service titles in the future.

Marvel’s Avengers may be the biggest name in pop culture at the moment but no matter how successful the movies are the game has been something close to a flop.

The pandemic hasn’t helped, with promised DLC taking a long time to arrive, but for many the game was fundamentally uninteresting, with the best part by far being the single-player storyline with Ms. Marvel and not the four-player co-op, game as a service (GaaS) features.

That makes sense given developer Crystal Dynamics’ previous experience with the Tomb Raider series and now Square Enix boss Yosuke Matsuda has admitted as much, saying that the publisher needs ‘to select game designs that mesh with the unique attributes and tastes of our studios and development teams’.

‘It has unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked,’ said Matsuda of the game in Square Enix’s annual report.

‘While the new challenge that we tackled with this title produced a disappointing outcome, we are certain that the GaaS approach will grow in importance as gaming becomes more service oriented’, he added.

‘How we go about creating new experiences by incorporating this trend into our game design is a key question that we will need to answer going forward.’

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His comments raise several issues, including the future of Marvel’s Avengers, what other projects Crystal Dynamics will work on next, and what future games as a service titles Square Enix might be contemplating.

Crystal Dynamics is already making a new Tomb Raider game and helping with development of Microsoft’s Perfect Dark, so it’s unclear how much extra capacity they have even if they stopped working on Avengers.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing about Marvel’s Avengers is that it seems to have dampened interest in Square Enix’s Guardians Of The Galaxy, despite it being a notably superior game.