So, it has come to this. Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics' rather controversial MARVEL's Avengers has seemingly hit rock bottom, although this isn't something that we haven't seen coming from a few miles away, since the development of the game always felt somewhat of a disaster.
MARVEL's Avengers was released early in September, and reviews have not been kind at all. Currently with a Metascore of 67/100 and a rather disappointing User Score of 5.1, Crystal Dynamics' take on the Earth's Mightiest Heroes could hardly be considered a masterpiece, even when there are quite a bunch of redeeming factors; story being the one that takes the cake.
According to video game industry analyst David Gibson, the total cost of MARVEL's Avengers is estimated to be closer to $170m-$190m, but the game has seemingly only managed to sell a measly 3 million in copies — as Square Enix reports a loss of ¥6.5 billion for their HD Games division.
This information comes from Square Enix's financial results for the end of the fiscal year's second quarter that ended on the 30th of September. According to this, the company reported that sales went down by 30 percent from the previous quarter — which coincided with the release of the highly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake — from ¥34.1bn to ¥23.7bn by the end of Q2.
Even more fascinating is the fact that this is actually to be expected, since players were reporting that MARVEL's Avengers felt unfinished, and that it was rather repetitive from a gameplay standpoint; all issues that were present in the game's beta and were not addressed by the developers.
What's more, MARVEL's Avengers also experienced a rather massive dip in active Steam players that caused issues with matchmaking — with many users complaining that they had to wait for ridiculous amounts of time in order to find an online match; if they could even find one at all.
Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics Scott Amos was quick to address the dip, revealing that he was confident that players would return to the game, and that they were actively working to fix recurring issues in future updates; updates that players still haven't seen.
Interestingly enough, NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella revealed last month that MARVEL's Avengers was the best-selling game of September in North America, beating out Nintendo's Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. Unfortunately Piscatella didn't share exactly how many copies of any of the aforementioned titles were sold.
To add insult to injury, and even before the game's release, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics promised that Hawkeye and more content was being added to MARVEL's Avengers within weeks after the game launched; it's two months later and players are still waiting for said content to arrive.
Marvel’s Avengers begins at A-Day, where Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Black Widow, and Thor are unveiling a hi-tech Avengers Headquarters in San Francisco — including the reveal of their own helicarrier powered by an experimental energy source. The celebration turns deadly when a catastrophic accident results in massive devastation. Blamed for the tragedy, the Avengers disband. Five years later, with all Super Heroes outlawed and the world in peril, the only hope is to reassemble Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
MARVEL's Avengers is currently available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia; PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X expected to release in 2021.