President of Square Enix Yosuke Matsuda spoke with GamesIndustry.biz about what the publisher expects from the upcoming Marvel’s Avengers. After finally seeing footage of the superhero title at E3 2019, some fans may have been left disappointed. Despite this, Square Enix has high expectations for the project, comparing it to 2018’s Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac.
According to Matsuda:
Spider-Man was a huge title and a major success, so we would like to work hard to have that kind of success. So I guess it did increase my expectations [for Avengers]. I do believe you have to have high goals. I thought that Spider-Man was fantastic, but we don’t want to be bested by them. We are working very hard on the development effort right now, so that we are able to provide a new experience.
Later on in the interview, Matsuda discussed the teams working on the project:
The lead studio on the project is Crystal Dynamics, and Eidos Montreal is supporting them, and there’s support from [Netherlands studio] Nixxes, and they’re interacting with each other in a variety of different ways. But, when you talk about blockbuster or AAA titles these days — in general — you’ll find your resources are too limited if you try to develop them only at a single studio. For that reason, a variety of studios are collaborating with one another.
Matsuda thinks Marvel’s Avengers will be lucrative for the company and that we might even see a franchise, if it becomes successful:
It doesn’t have to be a licensing arrangement, but this time with Marvel we decided we were going to produce a new Avengers experience that was going to be completely separate to the very famous cinematic universe. We saw this as a considerable challenge, and we thought that by doing that, it would give us experiences that we could then leverage moving forward when making other new titles.
There’s still a ways to go before the game’s release in May 2020. Many are still confused as to what the game will actually be, as the marketing for Marvel’s Avengers hasn’t been the most clear. We finally got confirmation that it will feature a single-player only story mode, with a separate games-as-a-service online mode.
With the success of developer Crystal Dynamics and publisher Square Enix, Marvel’s Avengers has the potential to be a fun experience, even if it didn’t have the best E3 showing. Hopefully we’ll find out more soon.
[Source: GamesIndustry.biz via IGN]
