Marvel’s Avengers was supposed to have been a game to watch out for, until it wasn’t. Plagued with pre-launch controversies leading to a lukewarm launch, players were rather disappointed with how it turned out. While the developers have been fully committed to steering the ship in the right direction, adding updates and fixes for the past year, we finally get to hear the side of Square Enix about it all.

As can be seen on page 5 of the annual report from Square Enix, President Yosuke Matsuda had a few choice words for the game as it navigated its way through unforeseen circumstances brought about by the pandemic, saying 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.”

Matsuda continued to say that “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.”

Crystal Dynamics is not new to the industry, and they’ve been able to produce very successful titles like the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. As evidenced by those games, it is clear that their forte lies in single-player titles adventures, to which the best part of Marvel’s Avengers was arguably its story campaign. Despite that, it seems that the statement from Square Enix insinuates that the team was probably not the right fit for the game.

What did you think of Marvel’s Avengers?