Marvel’s Avengers could have been a great success for Square Enix. But the reality looks different. In the quarterly report, the company talked about the game, which clearly fell short of expectations. However, Square Enix remains optimistic.
What does the publisher say? In the latest earnings call, Square Enix discussed the events and revenues between July 1 and September 30, 2020. This period coincided with the release of Marvel’s Avengers.
However, the action game significantly underperformed, as David Gibbson, an analyst for the Japanese market, stated:
- Square Enix incurred a loss of 6.5 trillion yen (approximately 63 million dollars), primarily driven by Marvel’s Avengers.
- The game reportedly cost between 170 and 190 million dollars in development and marketing.
- Ultimately, it is believed to have sold only about 3 million copies by September 30. According to Gibson, this was only about 60% of what Square Enix had projected.
However, as seen in the quarterly report, the numbers are still positive compared to the previous year. Furthermore, Square Enix seems to believe that they can recover from the losses.
The Huge Potential of Marvel’s Avengers Remained Untapped
What happened to the game? Marvel’s Avengers actually had everything needed for a major success:
- Various superheroes with different roles
- An action-packed combat system
- Single-player and multiplayer elements
- Media attention from the Marvel license
- A good release window, as almost no other game was released in September 2020
However, even the beta of the game did not meet the expectations that fans had. The combat system did not convince many, nor did the loot system.
Additionally, there was criticism surrounding the character Spider-Man, who will exclusively be available on PS4/PS5.
How did it perform after release? After the release, things initially looked better. There were adjustments to the controls and combat. However, the game still has 3 major issues: bugs, lack of content, and loot.
Just one month after release, player counts on Steam fell below 1,000 for the first time. How many players are on Xbox or PS4 is not known.
What’s next? On October 14, a new patch was released that brought many bug fixes and a new outpost of the SHIELD organization. This came with new missions and new loot.
However, the update has not yet turned the tide.
It is already known that more heroes like Hawkeye and indeed Spider-Man are planned for Sony consoles, as well as versions for the next-gen consoles PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. However, when they will be released is not known.
Just like Marvel’s Avengers, the game Anthem struggled with significant and very similar issues after its release. BioWare has already promised major adjustments, a kind of Anthem 2.0. However, the latest information sounds somewhat sobering:
Anthem is abandoning its own new ideas – now focusing on those that work
