“Painfully aware” is a specific phrase you only use in rare cases. But, in the case of Marvel Studios, it’s the perfect way to describe the state of its video game adaptations.
Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales are some of the best-selling games on the PlayStation and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is generating GOTY talks ahead of its release, but the rest don’t come close. The most successful non-Spider-Man Marvel video game outing in recent memory is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and even Square Enix labeled it as a disappointment. Marvel’s Midnight Suns and Marvel’s Avengers, the latter especially, weren’t exactly the best representations of the properties they’re based on.
However, with a much heavier slate of upcoming video game adaptations coming up, it appears Marvel Studios has had it with lackluster outings.
Marvel is PAINFULLY aware of how their video games division hasn’t been reaching its potential overall.
There have been whispers of an internal shift for Marvel to focus on games. The new EA Black Panther and Iron Man games will be the start of a push for something BIG. https://t.co/mFp2DQVYFH pic.twitter.com/AwSgGXMGTz
— CanWeGetSomeToast (@CanWeGetToast) September 30, 2023
In a response to a tweet by a fan highlighting Marvel’s laundry list of gaming flops, CanWeGetSomeToast claimed that Marvel knows this, but it’s not going to take it lightly. They claim of “whispers of an internal shift for Marvel to focus on games.” They added that the “new EA Black Panther and Iron Man games will be the start of a push for something BIG.
Unfortunately, the leaker didn’t care to explain what exactly they were talking about, but we can at least speculate.
At the moment, the largest upcoming Marvel titles outside of Insomniac Games’ is a Black Panther game by Cliffhanger Games; an open-world Iron Man game by EA Motive; and, finally, Skydance New Media’s WWII game featuring both Captain America and Black Panther.
With Disney greenlighting an even bigger lineup of Star Wars games, it’s understandable why Marvel Studios is looking to make a big push as well.
Over the past two decades, Spider-Man and Batman have dominated the gaming industry. Marvel Studios’ new initiative may give obscure characters a chance to shine. In an ideal world, we’d get a Marvel vs Capcom vs DC crossover fighting game, with both DC and Marvel giving Capcom all the money it needs. Can you imagine how many comic book fans would willingly throw money at their screens just to see what would happen if Batman ever faced off against Iron Man or if Joker can survive Deadpool’s antics?
Of course, this will never happen, especially as this will inevitably lead to one company walking away looking worse and nobody wants that.
For now though, we can only hope EA Motive is taking notes. The good news is that it belongs under the Electronic Arts umbrella, which means that it can ask BioWare for help regarding the flight mechanics, one of the few good things that Anthem, one of the worst games to come out in recent memory, absolutely nailed. On the other hand, the Black Panther game doesn’t have to take notes from Spider-Man or Batman at all. Instead, it’s easy to see how a Wakanda-set game is an easy sell if it’s based off of the template of the Middle-Earth games by Monolith Studios. Don’t forget, Cliffhanger Games was founded by Kevin Stephens, the former Vice President of Monolith Studios who helped with the development of both Middle-Earth Shadow of Mordor and Middle-Earth: Shadow of War.
As long as these games aren’t rushed out of the gates and go through extensive quality testing, they should sell well is given the right amount of marketing push.
Still, it’s unfortunate that Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t get the credit that it deserves. It was a GOTY nominee, after all. If not for the presumably humongous amount of money it cost Square Enix to secure the license to make the game, maybe Square Enix wouldn’t have had such high sales expectations for the game and would’ve probably thought of giving it a sequel. Alas, this didn’t happen. To make matters worse, Embracer Group, the company that bought the studio that developed Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Eidos Montréal, isn’t exactly in good financial shape.
We can only imagine just how much better Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 2 would’ve sold if it had retained the same quality graphics, voice acting, and narrative quality but with improved gameplay and better marketing.
Ultimately, the amount of time and money it takes for development studios to invest in making video game adaptations of popular multimedia IPs makes these investments difficult to stomach. But, perhaps, now that the stock of the MCU is arguably at its lowest in years, Marvel Studios is much more willing to foot a bigger chunk of the bill and take home a smaller percentage, all for the sake of getting quality AAA games.
Unfortunately, most of the in-development Marvel games are early in the process, so it’ll be a while before we can say if they’re good, but this report is a good start.
After a string of relatively unwelcome shows and films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will end the year with a killer trio with Loki Season 2 premiering on Disney+ on October 6 followed by The Marvels’ theatrical release on November 10 before closing things out with Season 1 of Echo on November 29.
