Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: Two zeros out of two so far: the deal with Disney won’t survive much longer if the Japanese publisher falls short of its expectations!

Square Enix has released two games from the Marvel licences held by Disney. Marvel’s Avengers didn’t win gamers’ trust with its live service model (not to mention PlayStation players’, who had to wait over a year for the PlayStation 5/PlayStation 4 exclusive Spider-Man). Then, a month of microtransactions affecting gameplay didn’t help its reputation much either.

And then there’s last autumn’s single-player (but still requiring an internet connection, also riddled by Denuvo on PC), DLC-free Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. In its latest financial report, the Japanese publisher wrote that its sales were below target, while Outriders or Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139, for example, performed as expected. According to Yosuke Matsuda, the game’s director, the release period of the game adaptation of Guardians of the Galaxy was not lucky either, as, for example, FIFA 22 was released around the same time, which did not bring in sales, even though (and this is what Square Enix wrote) the reviews for the game were excellent.

Square Enix has now set itself the goal of achieving more sales. The logical next step is for the Japanese to cut the price of the game and perhaps get rid of Denuvo on PC, which is unlikely if the FREE prologue to Life is Strange 2, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, and The Quiet Man, one of the worst games of 2018, still have the copy protection that is now absolutely unnecessary (and costly due to the license).

Meanwhile, Electronic Arts did get a bit of a kick out of Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order beating expectations (and it’s no wonder a sequel is in the works, and it’s official, we wrote about it). So there IS a demand for single-player, AAA titles.

Source: JVL