Marvel’s Avengers video game fails to deliver

The video game hasn’t been even close to achieving the same level of success the movie franchise saw

Square Enix is probably wishing it had real superpowers now. The company is behind the Marvel’s Avengers video game, which anyone would have expected to be a Hulk-smashing success, given the popularity the movie franchise has enjoyed. However, even superheroes lose sometimes, and the video game cost Square Enix almost $50 million. Based on the latest figures, there’s no chance things will get better, either.

Marvel’s Avengers performed so poorly that Square Enix wasn’t even able to recover the money it sunk into the game to produce it. It only launched a couple of months ago and never developed traction, and has now seen a 96% dropoff in players. The company explained in its latest financial release, “In addition to the amortization of that game’s development costs, another significant factor associated with the title was the fact that we undertook a major advertising campaign at the time of its launch to make up for delays in our marketing efforts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a certain amount of development costs still to be amortized in 3Q, but we want to recoup it by growing our sales going forward.”

Square Enix might try to reverse the downward spiral going forward, as it indicates that it isn’t giving up completely on the video game. It hints at possible introducing more downloadable content (DLC) in the future, but stops short of describing when and how. It might already be too late, though, as the recent releases of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are keeping gamers occupied with other content.