Much has been said about Marvel’s Avengers’ rather lackluster showing as a GaaS (Games as a Service) title, and it seems Square Enix agrees with the sentiments of players, as the publisher admits that the game was a “disappointing outcome” for the publisher.
During Square Enix’s latest quarterly financials report, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda released the following statement where he not only confirmed that Marvel’s Avengers underperformed, but that Crystal Dynamics — a studio most notably known for its work on single-player games like the Tomb Raider franchise — was not a good fit for the project.
I would also note that “Marvel’s Avengers” was an ambitious title for us in that we took on the GaaS (Games as a Service) model. We overcame a variety of unexpected difficulties in the final phase of the game’s development, including needing to transition to work-from-home due to the pandemic. We were able to surmount these challenges and release the game, but it has unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked.
Nonetheless, taking on the GaaS model highlighted issues that we are likely to face in future game development efforts such as the need to select game designs that mesh with the unique attributes and tastes of our studios and development teams. While the new challenge that we tackled with this title produced a disappointing outcome, we are certain that the GaaS approach will grow in importance as gaming becomes more service oriented. How we go about creating new experiences by incorporating this trend into our game design is a key question that we will need to answer going forward.
Hopefully, Square Enix rebounds from this, and manages to pull off a successful GaaS game in the future. That said, Marvel’s Avengers is still getting content up to this day, and has more incoming.