For years, on both Game Rant and Screen Rant, we've suffered through the awkward video game-film relationship. The sad reality, as we so often repeat, is that movies based on video games and video game movie tie-ins all suck, with the rare exception here and there.

A major contributor to this problem in recent years is Marvel and their partnership with Sega to released video games for all of the Marvel Studios films to date. Every single one of them was ugly, dated and downright bad. For fans, the good news is that Sega seems to be out of the mix but we don't know yet if there will be a full-fledged retail release for The Avengers.

We can thank Sega for the awful, poorly made, over-priced, unfair-to-fans-and-the-industry games including The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Captain America: Super Soldier and Thor: God of Thunder. The Thor game was so bad it made us angry that it was even made.

At GDC this week, The Hollywood Reporter chatted with TQ Jefferson, VP Games Production for Marvel, briefly (and safely) touching on the topic of Sega published Marvel games as well as the problem of licensed movie games.

"There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by Sega."

Yay!

So, why have all of these Marvel movie games sucked?

"In my opinion, the biggest afflictions affecting movie-licensed games is the amount of development time and a strict adherence to retelling the story of the film in the form of a game. The former is easy to understand -- less development time means less time to design, produce and polish the game, resulting in a poor or lesser-quality experience."

Is that why this continued for three years, releasing five of these poorly conceived games for every platform? We know Sega's not working on a game for The Avengers and the one THQ was working on got canned. Is there going to be a full console release or is Marvel (and parent company, Disney) just focusing on social and free-to-play games going forward?

"We just launched Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook; which is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the first in a much larger effort to support the Avengers franchise across not just one but multiple video game touch points. The Avengers are bigger than just one game, and we’re planning to allow consumers to enjoy The Avengers regardless of their preference in gameplay style or platform. Look for more announcements in the weeks to come."

In addition to Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Gazillion has the Super Hero Squad game for the toddlers and they have the upcoming  Marvel Heroes MMO on the way, but still now word on a potential retail game based on The Avengers.

We previously reported in September 2011 that the license for the characters had reverted back to Marvel - hence, no more Sega - and that they were looking for publishing opportunities from other potential partners. With Jefferson hinting at incoming announcements, perhaps they found someone?

If only Rocksteady Studios wasn't tied to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment...

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Source: THR