It's been a rough road for Marvel's Avengers following the game's launch back in September. While fans were drawn in by the game's campaign and well written story following Kamala Kahn's attempt to reunite the Avengers after the devastating events of A-Day, the live service model that serves as the foundation of the game is proving to be problematic. Not only have players ran into a number of bugs and game breaking technical issues, many of which are still being addressed, but the end game content doesn't appear to be satisfying many players. The lukewarm reception and now delayed post-launch content seems to have negatively impacted sales of the major AAA title as well.
Square Enix, parent company of Marvel's Avengers developer Crystal Dynamics, released a new quarterly financial report that confirms the company has lost 6.5 billion Yen for its Digital Entertainment - HD Games business. This news is concerning considering that Marvel's Avengers was the big game for the company during this financial quarter indicating that overall sales were only 60% of what the company expected from overall game sales and microtransactions.
It's worth noting that Square did not indicate who many copies were sold or how much development cost to create Marvel's Avengers. However, Astris Advisory Japan KK co-founder, David Gibson, tweeted that the news implies that the game cost anywhere between $170-$190 million to create considering that only 70% of cost is reflected.
When compared to the previous financial quarter, which was headlined by the PS4 exclusive, Final Fantasy VII Remake, the difference is even more staggering. During that period, the HD Games Division saw a big profit of 10 million Yen, coming off of sales of 34.1 billion Yen. Things continued to look good for the company as the Marvel's Avengers beta pulled in millions of players over the course of multiple weekends. However, considering how close it was positioned to the launch, there was no time for Crystal Dynamics to adjust things based on feedback, leading to some player frustrations.
Lately, the game has been seeing a lot of troubling trends which lead many to believe the game is in a tailspin it may not be able to recover from. Over the past few weeks, SteamCharts suggests that the PC players have been leaving in droves, triggering matchmaking issues with anywhere from 1,000-2,000 people actively playing a month after launch. Not only that, the next-gen versions of the game have been postponed and the post-launch content featuring Kate Bishop and Hawkeye have missed their original launch window. While Crystal Dynamics continues to quick resolve not only technical issues as well as content issues, the studio may be running out of time to sway players.
Marvel's Avengers is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions currently in development.