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Marvel’s Avengers flopped so hard that it still hasn’t recouped its development costs

65 Comments

During its Financial Results Briefing Session for the first half of
the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021, Square Enix revealed that Marvel’s Avengers hasn’t recouped its development costs. Marvel’s Avengers came out in September 2020, which means that it’s not profitable after two whole months.

As Square Enix stated when asked about the estimated ¥7B operating loss in the HD Games sub-segment.

“Absent factors associated with “Marvel’s Avengers,” the sub-segment would have been in the black. 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 has also stated that it intends to invest in new IPs.

“In regards to growing our customer base by creating new IP, I have to say that creating new IP is extremely challenging and that the difficulty involved has definitely increased. However, continuing to work to create new IP is essential to our further growth. As such, we will continue to do so. In addition, it is our intention to continue to expand our stable recurring earnings so that we will be able to stand up to that challenge.”

Square Enix has not revealed how many copies Marvel’s Avengers has sold so far. However, Square Enix has always been setting really high standards. In 2013, the publisher stated that Tomb Raider needed to sell 5-6 million copies. Hitman Absolution also needed to hit 4.5-5 million sales, and Sleeping Dogs had to sell 2-2.5 million units.

65 thoughts on “Marvel’s Avengers flopped so hard that it still hasn’t recouped its development costs”

      1. I actually really liked Mankind Divided except the abrupt and open ended ending leaving room for a Sequel.

        Why do you think it was garbage?

        Optimization wise when it came out it was a hit or miss, but that would have been my biggest gripe at the time.

        Reply

  4. “In regards to growing our customer base by creating new IP, I have to say that creating new IP is extremely challenging” – They are not even trying. Marvel Avengers is not a new IP, at least from my perspective. Also while they (publishers) keep trying to push games as service, I will mostly ignore.

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    1. The franchise is so popular that success is practically served to them on a platter. You have to be spectacularly incompetent and detached from gamers to fail like this. Ladies and gentlemen – The genius company that is Square Enix.

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  7. Oh no 🙁 lemme go fetch my tiny violine.

    Maybe next time don’t make a lazy live service cash grab with a forced woke protagonist nobody’s interested in, and actually focus on having good content free od bugs. Crazy idea, I know…

    Reply

    2. The Sleeping Dogs movie starring Donnie Yen, Is almost complete. That should revive the IP. I mean… he is the IP man…. hehehe.

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  11. In gaming marvel always flops (all games). except spiderman is pretty good not that bad but kinda kids type game spiderman is the way character acts

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      2. I don’t think so. Don’t fall for “we have 3x more players” “fastest selling” marketing buzzwords. they lie to their investors, simple as that. just follow Division 2’s launch news, it was the fastest blah blah and it failed miserably.

        Reply

  17. I’m honestly surprised, i thought kids and teens would flock in by the many millions regardless of the quality of the product…

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  18. If Square Enix had the MCU actors voice their roles and the characters looked like them, and if they dumped Suicide Bomber Plastic Man, they would have had a successful game.

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    1. Respectfully disagree. Movie voiceovers and skins would not have made a difference. The boring and cliche plot, repetitive gameplay, mtx, terrible villain choices all contributed. Worst of all, they went with a shoehorned main character Kamala Khan that nobody wanted, as opposed to a thousand other mains from the Marvel universe that EVERYONE would have preferred. Most people who’ve read the old avengers comics or seen the avengers movies have never even heard of Khan! Why not Dr Strange or Bucky or Antman, frankly anyone would be better than a character nobody has heard of, (Khans own comic series has been cancelled 3 times from lack of interest/sales) Also making spiderman exclusive was a huge negative, and kate bishop as DLC? Really? Its as if they made a list of all the ways to screw up a easy win…and freaking NAILED the list.

      The question is, will square or other companies learn from this scenario? I highly doubt it given gamergate, BFV, and recent history. If anything the corporate world seems to double down for the woke crowd and easily offended twitterati, most of whom dont even play, much less buy these games.

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        1. Perhaps. But I think for the reasons I stated, theyd be lucky to break even if they did HALF of the things I mentioned above correctly.

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  19. Companies that are unable to learn that woke is poison to the bottom line keep setting piles of their money on fire.

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    1. Her own comic was cancelled 3 times because nobody cared for it. I know, lets make her the main character in a game based on the hype from a movie series shes not even in! Brilliant!

      Reply

  25. They just didn’t understand that a majority of gamer’s these days are more sophisticated then they think. From my perspective the game really had no soul. It has bad generic character design and a mediocre story… so what were they expecting to succeed with ..cliche? Square Enix needs to respect their target audience in the future.

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    1. Exactly. And them talking about “creating new IP” shows they are still completely clueless, and will continue to push soulless games one after another.

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  26. So they just decided to use Covid as a scapegoat instead of looking at their sh*tty business practices with platform exclusive content and releasing a half finished product for $60. About what I’d expect from companies like this

    Reply

  27. 1) “creating new IP is extremely challenging and that the difficulty
    involved has definitely increased. However, continuing to work to create
    new IP is essential to our further growth”

    2) Keep flopping and losing monies while using your old ips.

    Pick one squareenix, there is a cliff at the end for you anyways.

    Reply

  28. While I do enjoy sh**ting on this game as much as anyone, I have to say, two month is not enough to consider this game a financial failure. Since we don’t have the specifics, they can be pretty close to recuperating their costs.
    Now if a year passes and it still hasn’t turned up a profit, that’s another story.

    Truth be told I think it and similar GaaS can’t go down the history bin fast enough. The entire industry is trying to hook you in like drug dealers, and they are somewhat successful especially with the younger ones. This entire practice of hooking people in with mind tricks and psychological manipulation instead of actually trying to provide a worthwhile experience needs to die. Gaming should not be about whether you can resist the mind tricks, it should be about having fun, and maybe experiencing something new or exciting.

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  30. The problem isn’t the IP. They didn’t make a good game. The devs also picked a character in the Marvel universe literally nobody cares about, and the fact that her comic was canceled numerous times since its debut in 2013 proves it! Putting her in the game as the main protagonist was a death knell.

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  31. Okay this failed now lets do Godfall, but i haven’t heard from that game for a long time so it might be already the case. Is there a light in the end of the tunnel.

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  32. Its incredible how they squandered this everything about this game sucks.
    They make a horrible game that’s designed to be a money pit rather than a fun experience.
    Their discount “Cospoor” Avengers look.
    Clinching with Kamala Khan as the main/pov character for virtue signaling/political brownie points.

    Reply

  34. Marvel and Floopped in the same sentence at this time… you don’t say? 😉 Marvel have gone to sh*t and even got flushed now and SE did the mistake to bring up what’s been flushed rather than use any of their other IP’s that isn’t dead and buried.

    Shame to say it but jokes are on them!

    Reply

  35. Imagine saying

    creating new IP is extremely challenging and that the difficulty involved has definitely increased

    when you just flopped with the biggest IP of last decade.

    Reply

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