Last fall, the publisher Square Enix embarked like so many others in a vast race for the shallot which consists of declining the Marvel video game licenses with a certain Marvel’s Avengers, and the moderate success that it has received. knows. Abandoning capes and tight-fitting outfits for a good old Excel spreadsheet, the editor now calculates the best way to kick a door wide open.
It’s been more than a year now that Marvel’s Avengers has tried in vain to empty the pockets of gamblers who are not too careful about their spending, thanks to a game-service that even our national Roman did not consider “not so great as that”. Only a few weeks after its launch, players were deserting the servers of a game that had not amortized its development costs, despite encouraging signs during the early stages of beta.
It gets better saying it
While Marvel’s Avengers quickly (and symbolically) passed below the 1000 simultaneous player mark on PC, the developers of Cristal Dynamics tried to save the furniture by promising fixes, improvements and updates of all kinds, without specifying whether the arrival of Paid experience points that were just taken out of the game were or were not part of the equation.
Now that Square Enix seems to have ticked all the boxes of big bingo one by one of what not to do to achieve critical and commercial success, the time has come to take stock, and it is the president of the publisher Yosuke Matsuda himself who is responsible for breaking down a door that is nevertheless wide open.
During a conference intended to inform the shareholders of the company, the person concerned admitted that Marvel’s Avengers had achieved “disappointing performance”, and that Square Enix “would learn the lessons” from this failure which only says half his name. Matsuda also admitted that entrusting the development of a multiplayer service title focused on online gaming to Cristal Dynamics, which for more than a decade had focused on Lara Croft’s single-player adventures, was arguably not the brightest. ideas.
“It’s not me, it’s Loki”
However, the president wanted to put into perspective the decisions taken in high places, by playing with skill a famous joker:
During the final phase of development, we faced a number of unexpected challenges, including the need to switch to telecommuting due to the pandemic.
Nonetheless, the game-as-a-service model has highlighted problems that we are likely to face in future projects, in particular by opting for design choices that correspond to the preferences of our development teams. We are convinced that the game-service model will become more and more important, and we will have to keep take this trend into account in our future productions.
And here is how not to question an economic model to which many however attribute the failure of Marvel’s Avengers. While waiting to find out if Square Enix will opt for more clever choices, remember that the little guys from Cristal Dynamics are now working alongside The Initiative to bring the Perfect Dark series back from the dead. Hopefully Microsoft had more perspective, and that the Marvel’s Avengers parenthesis is quickly forgotten …
What do you think of Yosuke Matsuda’s statements? Can Square Enix really learn from this failure? Let us know your service feedback below!
