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[Fuz]

 

[YeulEmeralda]

SE got tempted by the GAAS model. Their games seem historically skewed to single player kinds of games. Ya they got FF online stuff, but when you got traditional FF, DQ, Deus Ex, TR, upcoming Forspoken, they're one and done kinds of games.

On paper it looks awesome. Combine Marvel with GAAS and you never know. It could had sold shit loads of copies and be a tentpole franchise that could use as endless monthly revenue.

Just googled it.... the game had $3,400 ,worth of cosmetic mtx to buy if you wanted it. And despite saying no pay to win claims, sold XP Boost for real money. Then dropped it after a month due to criticism. LOL

Triple A single player games are hard to make money from. Not really SE's fault that gamers want these endless live service games.


SE should stick to smaller Japanese games with the occasional big JRPG release.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Delivering a game no one wanted will cost ya.

An Avengers game that could have played like Arkham games with multiple characters SHOULD have been what the doctor ordered. So I’d disagree that people didn’t want an Avengers game. They just failed to deliver a good one!

 

[FingerBang]

This is ridiculous, but it be how we get Guardians of the Galaxy 2, so all good.

 

[PhaseJump]

 

[DevilMayFlyForAWhiteGuy]

Honestly I think they should’ve started with a smaller type of game when it came to Marvel characters, and only focus on one character. I think CD could’ve pulled off a fun brawler with the more grounded characters like Cap, Black Widow, Black Panther, or Hawkeye. They wouldn’t have to worry about crazy flying and magic powers and just focus more on realistic combat styles and maybe platforming. Have a slow build up where you switch characters each chapter and each uncovers more clues to who the bad guys are or something.

Ironically, like DC did with the movie though, I think they blew their load on a team up game and we’re out of their depth. The GAAS mandate didn’t help either.

 

[DaGwaphics]

Jesus, i know both Avengers and GOTG underperformed but what kind of ridiculous budget did they have?, $250mil each!?
Thats down to Square themselves, although to be fair when you see how well superhero movies do at the box office, especially The Avengers, they must of thought it was a no lose situation.

IMO they were a bit too aggressive trying to sell you other things in Avengers. First time I booted that one I was legitimately a bit confused as to how to start the campaign, felt more like a store. That and the fact that the gameplay was a bore in that one.

Without the western franchises, I basically don't care about SE at all at this point (not FF player).

 

[Omali]

They had a great concept with Avengers and ran it into the ground with poor gameplay design, and I have no doubt that the bad taste Avengers left in people's mouths was why Guardians had its own problems selling. It looked too much like Avengers, even though it was a completely separate game. Matsuda was right in saying CD was the wrong studio to make Avengers.

Conceptually the idea of a service game that would roll out heroes (along with stories) and villains as free updates could have been a money maker, like Marvel Heroes. But they fucked it up. People saw the per-character battle passes as them selling $60 worth of battle passes at launch although you got all six character passes with the game as well as like $80 worth of currency for completing them that would cyclically pay any new character's pass, but they were still selling level skips for real money. You've got the awful publicity that came with having mountains of product tie-ins announced like Virgin mobile, 5 Gum, etc. And then the game came out and it felt like shit. You're supposed to be playing Earth's mightiest heroes and yet the game threw you into fights where low-tier enemies could easily stunlock you to death, a lot of fights turned into massive clusterfucks of crowd control enemies just wiping you out, and there were so many problems with getting two-shot from someone on the other side of the area out of your range since everyone with a gun had sniper-precision aiming and massive damage. And then of course the pandemic hit and the release schedule of heroes trickled to a halt while the team focused on fixing bugs, crappy mechanics, and that you couldn't even replay story missions.

It also doesn't help that Crystal Dynamics has regularly treated the players like we're morons. They nerfed leveling speed promising us it wouldn't lead to them selling boosts, and then started selling leveling boosts barely a few months later. They claimed it was changed so players could level up smoother to not gain abilities too quickly and thus be overwhelmed by information, while also stating that the nerfed leveling didn't start until 25 and in fact the first levels were faster to get, negating their whole claim of wanting to ease new players in, not to mention the xp boost events they had on release of new characters negating that concern for new players even more. It became kind of a meme about them recycling Taskmaster over and over as the villain players fought in new content. And naturally you have Spider-Man being a PlayStation exclusive leading to him getting almost nothing in the way of content because cost + resources.

Wasted potential that game.

 

[K' Dash]

This brings a smile to my face.

SE is a shell of it's dormer self, the sooner Sony buys them, the better.

 

[Calling 911 Melts Beams]

poor people: thats a lot of money

me: *looks at privately owned second season of firefly episodes and shrugs*

 

[Woopah]

Hilarious how people blame square enix for this without any knowledge of the management structure and just for their dislike of square enix.

Square enix didn’t make avengers. They didn’t make guardians. My guess is they didn’t make the deals either. Maybe they did though. They have a relationship with Disney through kingdom hearts.

Ultimately 200 million probably comes from efforts to fix these games that at the end of the day couldn’t be fixed. In the case of GotG it might have been advertising after the fact, but it still costs money.

Square enix is a poorly run company but I don’t think you can blame them for these western games underperforming.

Square Enix was both the publisher and the owner of the developers of these games. How are they not to blame?

 

[Pagusas]

10000% deserved. They took the worst possible angle of making that Cheap Chinese Knock-off/Porn Star Avengers. You had 2 options: 1 Make a Movie tie in game (would have been horrible) or 2 Go as FAR AWAY from the look and feel of the movies as possible to establish your own universe. Instead they choose to try hybriding it. God I wish I could of listened in on that design meeting, I hope there was at least one voice in there saying " Com'on man, these designs look like the porn star version"

 

[Thirty7ven]

Spend 200 million on dog dirt brehs

 

[KXVXII9X]

At some point I want Square Enix to take some damn responsibility and stop throwing their talent under the bus.

Guardians of the Galaxy is actually pretty great and it is a shame it released after The Avengers because that probably didn't help the reception of that game. They were probably responsible for making The Avengers a GaaS as they are really pushing for love service games. Babylon Fall was another victim to that.

It is frustrating because they do release some gems from time to time. Triangle Strategy and Neo: TWEWY are great games but they aren't massive money makers. Gamers want the big shiny games and it is unfortunate these smaller projects don't really sustain them.

I'm hoping Final Fantasy XVI and Dragon Quest XII help them because both look to be huge and are both going the gritty, full action combat route. Forspoken looks like a bit of a mess so I'm anticipating the surprise Pikachu face when that doesn't meet their insanely high expectations.

 

[Lupin25]

lol Could be, but thats my point. Maybe its a game people want, by a team, publisher and a execution that they don't want.

Maybe it was to lose all that money lol


@nikos Trust me, if Spiderman flopped, you'd be say the same thing thing for Sony.

They fucked up, but Square was right to try. Thats the only thing I'd never bash them for. No way can that be seen as a waste. It sucks it didn't pan out, but they'd be even more stupid to assume a lose, not try and wonder if they could have done something more, shit folks on here might have argued "wasted opportunity to capitalize on the Marvel Brand, look at Sony with 20 million Spiderman sales, guess Square hates money and common sense and or puppies and a bike" lol

Now that they are done with it, they can focus back on their established IPs. I just can't fault them for trying something new, we had several publishers this gen that literally didn't do shit new (EA being the biggest lol) So maybe its better they tried, failed and moved on.

Square-Enix offloading the shit that was Crystal Dynamics was the fundamental factor here lol.

Edit: The Avengers did so poorly, the reception’s momentum snowballed into Guardian’s of the Galaxy.

…I feel for Eidos-Montréal.

 

[Fugitive Sex]

Good.

 

[skit_data]

It feels like the timing of these games were simply off by about 4-5 years.

If they would’ve launched during peak Marvel Universe hype they’d done better but now they missed that critical mark and most of the hype around GotG and Avengers has died down and the super hero fatigue has settled in.

Edit: Also, the lukewarm reception of Avengers probably affected GotG as well, despite being a better game.

 

[AlteredForms]

PAHAHAHAHA!

 

[mckmas8808]

Jesus, i know both Avengers and GOTG underperformed but what kind of ridiculous budget did they have?, $250mil each!?
Thats down to Square themselves, although to be fair when you see how well superhero movies do at the box office, especially The Avengers, they must of thought it was a no lose situation.

Are you forgetting how well the Batman games from Warner Bros and the Spiderman games from Sony have done? I think they were looking at that more than the superhero movies.

 

[deriks]

Delivering a game no one wanted will cost ya.

It's not really that no one wanted, but was too late for the party and also not a big deal...

 

[Bo_Hazem]

This is what you get when you try to replicate Sony's success. You just can't emulate decades of game design heritage, massive movie/tv division, massive camera division along with lots of things that help every Sony game to go from zero to hero. Spiderman before Sony was a complete garbage, so what happened with SE doesn't surprise me. Only the likes of Universal, WB that can pull something on-par.

Wolverine is in good hands.

 

[AJUMP23]

Avengers really killed the market. The game being so bad just soured people on a good game like GotG.

If Avengers would have come out between Infinity War and Endgame I don't even think it being a terrible pile of steaming garbage could have kept it from making money. The zeitgeist had so much momentum then.

 

[Katajx]

Square Enix was both the publisher and the owner of the developers of these games. How are they not to blame?

Personally I think of the Japanese side and the Western side as being different entities.

The Japanese side does what they want and gets better results. The Western side makes games in a different way trying to cater to the west and struggles to find as much of an audience.

There are fans of both though.

 

[K2D]

Guess I'll go from day 1 purchaser of Square Enix games, to - check what user say/week 2 purchaser. Wouldn't want to fall in any mtx/nft-trap, and they seem to be looming..!

 

[phil_t98]

imagine if these games came with 2 hours trials, they would of lost even more

 

[Gambit2483]

That's what they get trying to turn Avengers into a GAAS. The bad taste that whole situation left only served to taint Guardians of the Galaxy's chances.

At least Sony is handling Marvel based games with care...

 

[Gambit2483]

imagine if these games came with 2 hours trials, they would of lost even more

Actually Avengers is a pretty fun by-the-books action game in its first 5 hrs or so. It isn't until the 2nd half that it becomes more service oriented.

Also, GOTG is actually a really well made single player adventure. A demo wouldn't have hurt it.

 

[CatLady]

What a shame GOTG was by far the best superhero game i ever played. Maybe it's because other franchises are more popular or maybe it's because they couldn't spend enough for advertising it.

I hate superhero/comic book games and I can't believe how much I loved GotG. Thank God it was free* on Game Pass or I never would have played it. It did not feel like a typical super hero game,. The characters and voice acting were fantastic. I enjoyed the story, the gameplay and the graphics were outstanding. I'm glad to hear Embracer will give us a sequel.

GotG was so good I finally decided to try the Avengers since it was also free* on Game Pass and people have said the campaign was decent. I absolutely hated it. It epitomized exactly why I hate superhero games. The characters were the epitome of corny, boring superheroes. I hated them especially that Kamala girl. The story didn't appeal to me at all and the gameplay was boring and repetitious.

It's too bad a great game like GotG failed because of a shit game like The Avengers.

 

[Astral Dog]

Wait WHAT this is the first time i hear Square sold Eidos and CD

I still can't understand how Square Enix could lose that much money on Marvel of all things(and they had very good sales afaik) just shows a license is not a magic ticket for success if you don't know what you are doing, their FFXIV success blinded them

Anyways, now with them gone maybe its a plus for both parties since Square has two studios less to manage

 

[Deerock71]

They might've reversed all that if they paid for the actors' likenesses instead of their stunt doubles.

 

[SF Kosmo]

From what I heard GotG was actually decent, so that's kind of a shame.

But Avengers was obviously not the game anyone wanted and a fine example of just doing it wrong.

 

[mckmas8808]

They might've reversed all that if they paid for the actors' likenesses instead of their stunt doubles.

 

[Mehmehperson]

It's because square enix gave the characters weird looking faces

 

[Wildebeest]

People say that the game industry is now bigger than the movie industry, but I don't think the market for cinematic games is bigger than the movie industry. Although, if you follow game reviews and enthusiasts, you would think it is the most important and prestigious part of the market. IP like Final Fantasy lend themselves much better to games as a service, as we see with Final Fantasy MMOs, but they do manage to walk the line between just giving people reasons to drop cash regularly and delivering impactful narrative elements. Tomb Raider and Deus Ex are so character driven, rather than world driven, that they are not "flexible" enough to walk that line, and neither are the studios structured to make games like that.

 

[phil_t98]

Actually Avengers is a pretty fun by-the-books action game in its first 5 hrs or so. It isn't until the 2nd half that it becomes more service oriented.

Also, GOTG is actually a really well made single player adventure. A demo wouldn't have hurt it.

I wouldn't of bought avengers if I played it at first. I have bought guardians but not played it much if am honest

 

[M1chl]

If they would not making that shitty first game, just the Guardians, they would probably swim in the money.

 

[Calverz]

The marvel bubble is going to burst soon.

 

[CamHostage]

I didn't think about this before, but... kind of interesting that Square Enix actually could actually sell off its Marvel license.

I'm not sure what power over they'd have, but it's a little strange that Marvel's brands could change hands without Marvel having a say in it anymore. I would figure part of the original clout behind Marvel Games making a deal with Square Enix (though they say their key criteria is the quality of the studio,) is the brand name of Square Enix. Having its Avengers or Guardians names now owned by something called "Embracer Group" (which, raise your hands if you had heard of Embracer before this buyout...?) is not as appealing.

Things could have been even more complicated if it had been bought by say Tencent, or maybe a competitor like Netflix or Amazon or an imagined Universal Studios division (although Disney seems fine with Sony making money off its name, so I guess business is business.)

 

[Katajx]

Avengers probably turned alot people off the game

I keep seeing this take, but I thought GOTG looked generic and I didn’t want to play a game only as Star Lord.

I played and actually liked Avengers till the end game, and that was probably because of the different characters and the combat.

 

[Honey Bunny]

 

[stn]

They shouldn't have made Avengers a GAAS game. That probably killed any future hype.

 

[Salty Popsicle]

The Avengers game released a year after the Avengers End Game movie which meant most of the hype and enthusiasm for the IP had already been exhausted. Not to mention it had trash GAAS implementation and nickel-and-dimed the few users who gave the game a chance. If the game had released sometime between 2017 - 2019 and had focused on a strong narrative foundation it could have sold much better.

The Guardians of the Galaxy game was a top-tier experience from beginning to end, but it came completely from out of left field and had poor marketing leading up to release. The game was announced during 2021 summer streaming event and released only a few months later in October. Not to mention the failure of Avengers had already made people wary about any Marvel IP handled by Square-Enix. Very unfortunate.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The Guardians of the Galaxy game was a top-tier experience from beginning to end, but it came completely from out of left field and had poor marketing leading up to release. The game was announced during 2021 summer streaming event and released only a few months later in October. Not to mention the failure of Avengers had already made people wary about any Marvel IP handled by Square-Enix. Very unfortunate.

I'm always amazed in modern day how companies cant do good online marketing.

It's not like the old days companies ponied up big money for endless magazine ads, tv ads, game store trinkets and posters and other random shit.

Now, marketing is very online focused.... web site, preview videos (as many as they can churn out), Reddit Q&A, etc.... Whatever info you release to the million game sites will probably get posted word for word.

Yet somehow even games from big publishes get buried as if they dont even have a marketing department anymore.

 

[Spaceman292]

SE got tempted by the GAAS model. Their games seem historically skewed to single player kinds of games. Ya they got FF online stuff, but when you got traditional FF, DQ, Deus Ex, TR, upcoming Forspoken, they're one and done kinds of games.

On paper it looks awesome. Combine Marvel with GAAS and you never know. It could had sold shit loads of copies and be a tentpole franchise that could use as endless monthly revenue.

Just googled it.... the game had $3,400 ,worth of cosmetic mtx to buy if you wanted it. And despite saying no pay to win claims, sold XP Boost for real money. Then dropped it after a month due to criticism. LOL

GAAS never looks good on paper

 

[Gambit2483]

It would've helped but not saved it outright

 

[Gambit2483]

I wouldn't of bought avengers if I played it at first. I have bought guardians but not played it much if am honest

I dunno....If they launched a demo of JUST the bridge sequence (running smoothly) something tells me it would have had more initial sales... also, if I'm being honest...I got guardians too, loved first 4 hrs then put it down

I'll def come back it though

 

[SF Kosmo]

They might've reversed all that if they paid for the actors' likenesses instead of their stunt doubles.

Yeah I mean that's why no one bought Spider-Man or Miles Morales.

 

[Woopah]

Personally I think of the Japanese side and the Western side as being different entities.

The Japanese side does what they want and gets better results. The Western side makes games in a different way trying to cater to the west and struggles to find as much of an audience.

There are fans of both though.

They operate differenly but until recently were all part of one entity. The developers at Crystal Dynamics and Edios Montreal were all Square Enix employees, same as Team Asano or Luminous Productions.

 

[AllBizness]

Those studios aren't a good fit for them because they cant make a return on the games they developed for them. Business is business

 

[Deerock71]

Yeah I mean that's why no one bought Spider-Man or Miles Morales.

Iron Man, Captain America, Thor...all played by one actor each. It is readily and EASILY apparent none of them were in that video game. And was Miles Morales anything other than a CG character?