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Square Enix lost 200 Million on Marvel games

Kokoloko85

Member
Guardians of the Galaxy was a fantastic game.
And Shadow of the Tomb Raider was better imo then Rise.
Eidos Montreal delivered and was dragged down by Crystal Dynamics
Damage was already done with Tomb Raider and people didn't give GotG a chance because of Avengers/Ms MTX
If I had to blame anyone it would be Crystal Dynamics.

No matter how much it was liked after launch, GOTG had an awful first showing. Looked like crap, shooting a square bullet sponge for a few minutes didnt help.

I really liked the Tomb Raider games
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
No matter how much it was liked after launch, GOTG had an awful first showing. Looked like crap, shooting a square bullet sponge for a few minutes didnt help.

I really liked the Tomb Raider games
I agree, when I first saw it thought it'd be another Avengers, but better and more focused.
Game completely surprised me.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
I agree, when I first saw it thought it'd be another Avengers, but better and more focused.
Game completely surprised me.
Yeah my brother said the same thing. Ill try it after Elden Ring, Kirby, Horizon 2, Triangle Theory etc
 
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This takes effort. No easy task. Marvel fans will buy literally anything with a toon on it. With this being the only exception.

Shame too because Guardians was fan fucking tastic.
 

Barakov

Member

"Embracer Group is planning to take over both Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy from Square Enix despite them losing money.

As fans and analysts alike try to make sense of Square Enix’s shock $300 million sale of Tomb Raider, and almost all their Western franchises and developers, the answer to the most burning question – why? – is becoming clearer.

According to senior MST Financial analyst David Gibson, the reason Square Enix sold Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal is relatively simple: between the Marvel Avengers and Guardians Of The Galaxy games they lost the company $200 million."


If they just delivered a solid character action game instead of something with the live service slant it probably would've done much better. GOTG was what they should've done with the Avengers to be honest.

I still think they shouldn't have made any of the Marvel games in the first place and just given us Deus Ex 3.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
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?
People LIKED that the Spider-Man games were set in their own timeline with their own canon, and weren't saddled with the restrictions that come with other Marvel licensed titles. Same reason they liked Arkham for that matter. Those games did way better than any movie tie in superhero games.

Avengers didn't have to live in the shadow of the movies with bootleg versions of their movie likenesses and no interesting original ideas. They CHOSE that direction. If the best aspiration they could think of was to come as close to a movie licensed title as they could, then they deserve to fail.
 
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Deerock71

Member
They were trying to cash in on the Mega-successful Avengers movie franchise. With stunt double faces. I don't know what to say, other than I don't think the standalone Spider Man movies were as successful as the Avengers, which included Spider Man sometimes.
 

Katajx

Gold Member
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.
I get you. All I was saying is that all of the decisions clearly aren’t made at the very top and by the same group of people.

I don’t think Crystal Dynamics and the other Western studios they offloaded are representative of how they do business as a whole.

For one reason or another it just didn’t work for all parties involved and maybe it’s for the best.

I never imagined the revenue generated from those studios/games would be that low, but maybe that could be chalked up to the current state of Eastern vs Western game development.

I might not be right, but I’m just offering an alternative point of view.
 
Embracer takes the crown from Bungie for best deal negotiators. This is just embarrassing for Square on so many levels. Part of me feels they sold off these studios and IP for such a horribly low price because they got tired of seeing their Japanese teams' efforts shown up by their significantly stronger producing western counterparts for the better part of a decade.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
I swear the only reason Square thought Crystal Dynamics would be a good fit for their company is because Final Fantasy won't shut the fuck up about crystals.

It makes about as much sense as square have been doing with there Western studio's.
 

Solarstrike

Member
The Marvel game(s) were too late to the party. A lot of people are Marveled' out. Too much Marvel this or that the past 20 years. SE should by the rights to Soul Blazer and Terranigma and bring them to life. Two of the finest RPG's of their era (1990s) made by Quintet and published by Enix
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Guardians was pretty good (no, it definitely wasn't fantastic), but Avengers ruined any chance it had. I was completely uninterested in Guardians after what I knew about Avengers (which I never bought), but some posts here and videos made me realize it was something very different. So I gave it a shot, and yeah, it was pretty good. A lot of people didn't, and I don't blame them.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
The Marvel game(s) were too late to the party. A lot of people are Marveled' out. Too much Marvel this or that the past 20 years. SE should by the rights to Soul Blazer and Terranigma and bring them to life. Two of the finest RPG's of their era (1990s) made by Quintet and published by Enix

Spider-Man 2 is going to be very successful.
 
Square Enix gets western game development the same way Microsoft gets Japanese development. Which is to say not at all. Why don't they just join forces and solve each others' problems?
 

CamHostage

Member
The Marvel game(s) were too late to the party. A lot of people are Marveled' out. Too much Marvel this or that the past 20 years. SE should by the rights to Soul Blazer and Terranigma and bring them to life. Two of the finest RPG's of their era (1990s) made by Quintet and published by Enix

...Heh, yes, the fools, to get into the Marvel business, all the while the Terranigma market is wide open and has been since 1995.

Sure, The Avengers was a bungle, but when "The Avengers Project" was announced, it was pretty much universally seen as a big deal for Square Enix/Crystal Dynamics and an exciting game to look forward to. By the time of Guardians, yes, that was a bungle of a different and smaller caliber, but mostly because Square showed it off awfully in its reveal and marketed it rather lamely and had to release it in the shadow of Avengers' flop, which was a lot to overcome for what actually was a good game in a good brand.



So, maybe people are "Marveled out", but maybe it's just not the money-printing thing in games that it is in cinema and TV. That's one of the reasons why Marvel Games is very careful with who gets its brands, and very demanding of how big the treatment is (which ultimately was the wax-wings on the Avengers Icarus flight towards the sun.) They've licensed out less than a dozen console/PC games since the Disney Interactive publishing foldup in 2016 that led to the small Marvel Games license group, and none have just been character-action-game-of-the-month movie tie-in releases the way it was in the old days with SEGA churning out Iron Man and Thor games or Activision making as many X-Men games as it could to retain claim to the license. I think if Xbox could have gotten Hulk, that could have been amazing, and the two Insomniac projects are almost guaranteed blockbusters. They have their flops, as anybody does (we'll see how the WTF Marvel Midnight Suns works out, could be great but if a Guardians game was hard to sell, imagine trying to get this name over,) but it is far from a spent brand.
 
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lyan

Member
The Marvel game(s) were too late to the party. A lot of people are Marveled' out. Too much Marvel this or that the past 20 years. SE should by the rights to Soul Blazer and Terranigma and bring them to life. Two of the finest RPG's of their era (1990s) made by Quintet and published by Enix
Agree, even before the game is out I know literally no one that is interested in the Avengers game despite most have visited the theatre for all the Marvel movies.
 

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
I lost $70 on Avengers as well.

They really fucked that game up and I’m sure it cost them sales on the far far superior Guardians game. Shame really one of the best marvel games and the worst coming from the same publisher.
 
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S-E has been an awful company stuck in chasing trends for a good 10+ years now. No more big budget innovation or passion projects, now they strictly make their marquee games based on other games that have been big hits, and do it worse. I would love to see the current NFT bootlicking president removed and for someone that actually likes games to be put in charge. That guy wants to be a Kotick/Andrew Wilson so bad.

The worst part is, they still have good games coming out, but they either make them on tiny budgets, give them no marketing, or make other awful decisions like EGS exclusivity bullshit on PC and their lowest of the low-tier remasters of classic games.

These Marvel games were just another example of them chasing trends. "We want the Destiny money" and "we want the Spiderman money" combined into one. It's a damn shame that GotG got lumped into the same bucket as Avengers, since it was a legitimately good game that was guilty by association. Tomb Raider remakes have been "we want the Uncharted money". Deus Ex, don't get me started.

I'm usually 100% against 3rd party pubs getting acquired/merged, but anything to get S-E's current management the fuck out of there is good news in my eyes.
What a garbage post. Please tell me how games like Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bravely Default 2, Triangle Strategy, World of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts III, Nier, and Dragon Quest XI are trend chasers. And your post says “past 10+ years” which makes it even more ridiculous lol. You’d have a case for these GaaS games (which includes XV sorry-not-sorry) being trend-chasers but that’s about it.
 

Pejo

Member
Equally garbage post
But ok, I'll bite for a bit.

Final Fantasy VII Remake - cinematic walking segments ala Uncharted mixed with "press x to awesome". I'm not a fan personally of the action combat, but that's just a taste thing. The time ghosts were a slap to the face of people who wanted a faithful remake.
Bravely Default 2 - trash game that ruined not only the art style of the previous games but also the battle system
Triangle Strategy - You really think this was a big budget game that was marketed well? This falls under the small projects that get no push by S-E themselves. I haven't played it but I hear good things about the game
World of Final Fantasy - Again, not a big budget game, but at least it did get some decent marketing at the time
Kingdom Hearts III - Nomura fanfiction tier writing, didn't play it but I can't argue that it's not budgeted and promoted, but then EGS exclusivity shit soured me on it anyways.
Nier - Great game, only given exposure because of the great sales and positive word of mouth despite SE not having confidence in the series. Has been whored out to any gacha game that will pay them money for a collab. I don't hate that in and of itself, but it stings a bit to see them take a passion project by Taro and pimp it out, especially considering it was built on having a unique and well thought out story.
Dragon Quest XI - The only one I'll give you at face value, great game. Though I will mention that selling the PS4 version on PC, then delisting that version (with better textures etc) for the definitive version (port of the Switch version) and not offering an upgrade path was classic S-E greed.

There was some hyperbole in my post, I'll admit, but I still stand by that S-E is a risk averse garbage company that chases western trends for anything that they actually give a damn about.
 

OldBoyGamer

Banned
For me.,,.

I think the buggy early builds were an issue. That got peoples backs up.
That demo did not help. I remember playing and thinking it was pretty bad. I can’t imagine how many other people played and like me thought ‘nah. I’ll wait for a £15 sale’. But having said that some people liked it.

The Spider-Man announcement for me though had a major impact. It made almost all the discourse around the game negative

And the second thing that I think had a massive impact were the character faces and voices. It was for me at least, the single biggest mistake they made. They made all the characters look like their movie counterparts apart from the faces and voices. That was SO jarring for me and it took me a while to get over it. Even now when I play it I’m waiting for the actors voices to kick in.

Between that and the Spider-Man issue, no one was talking about this game in a positive light. Anywhere.

Then there was also the Kamala Khan impact that noone talks about. Whilst Kamala is a really well portrayed character with the best VO in the game and a very likeable character. I think there was a case of ‘who the fuck is that? And why am I playing as her instead of the avengers?’ I’d never heard of the character before the game. I don’t recall her being in the movies? So I was excpecting to play as the main avengers characters, suddenly I’m playing as this character ive never heard of. I honestly thought when I first saw videos that it was a new super hero character SE had invented and wanted to push via the avengers brand. That has a massive impact on me as it cemented me not wanting to buy the game.

And then the final nail in the coffin. It went on game pass thus ensuring that millions of Xbox gamers would never buy the game and never spend a penny on mtx. Myself included.

Tldr. Multiple poor decisions the part of SE led to the game bombing; Spider-Man, face and voice differential from movies, gaas design that didn’t work, weak demo, Kamala Khan being main protag in main campaign.
 

Max_Po

Banned
YellowNegligibleAnnashummingbird-size_restricted.gif
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
They had two different games with $100,000,000+ budgets lose money?
No, I don't believe it. This sounds like Hollywood accounting. Avengers has in game purchases, I think something like this is more likely:
Square buys the license for both properties from Disney in one transaction. Since Avengers has in game purchases, Disney wants to get a cut of that. Square and Disney "find" a third party payment processor to manage the transactions and do the accounting. Square funds both games. Both games sell. The payment processor that Disney and Square own has a contract that they get some crazy royalty, 99% or some shit, plus a huge setup payment blah blah blah. Since the licensing deal was for both games, all the money that Square "loses" to the payment processor hits the profit sheet as a loss for both games. Square makes money on the games. Square makes money on in game purchases. Square and Disney each get a write off for the "losses" for the payment processor's cut.
 

Rest

All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
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.
There was no $200,000,000 loss.
 

Certinty

Member
Huge shame for Guardians, still the best game of the generation for me.

Avengers makes sense, outside of a decent campaign the rest was pure trash.
 

Bragr

Banned
But how much did they earn from the Tomb Raider Trilogy?

Also, I assume Avengers was the real problem here, long expensive development.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Thought funk it and started guardians of the galaxy. About 4 hours in and I'm super impressed so far. Seems great. A shame it was ruined by the terrible avengers game.

Eidos Montreal is an absolute steal of a studio for embracer. The voice acting and script is absolutely top tier in this.
 
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