The Japanese publisher might have aimed a bit too high when they announced the target they want to beat, but Square Enix has already decided.

Yosuke Matsuda, the CEO of Square Enix, told Gamesindustry that they have a big – and best-selling – game to defeat with the title being developed by Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal: „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.

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.

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,” Matsuda said. Basically, he thinks Avengers could be a franchise if it sells well.

Marvel’s Avengers is out on May 15, 2020, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC. If the game cannot sell more on four platforms than Spider-Man could achieve exclusively on the PlayStation 4, it might be the biggest gaming industry joke of 2020. (And Square Enix already had that in 2018 with The Quiet Man…)

Source: PlayStationLifeStyle