With Sony’s Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls off to a shaky start, a reader looks back at the surprisingly long list of Marvel video game flops and asks why even good games don’t sell.
Sony has fumbled the launch of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and I don’t really know why. I’m sure they had deadlines to make but if the PC version was so buggy why not just delay it for a few weeks? It’s not like they’re going to miss the Christmas season or something, we’re in the middle of August. But, as usual, when faced with the question of whether to delay a broken game or not the publisher just went ahead anyway and figured, ‘Who cares if it works or not?’
Well, also as usual, their stupidity immediately backfired, the game was a total flop on PC and the negative word of month seemed to affect the PlayStation 5 version as well, which doesn’t seem to have done well at all. Which is a shame as I quite liked the beta, even if I’d never want to buy it for full price.
But I don’t think it would’ve been a hit whatever happened because, weirdly, Marvel video games don’t sell. That doesn’t sound like it should be true, but apart from Spider-Man games and Lego tie-ins, it’s true and Marvel Tōkon is just the latest proof of that.
There have been Marvel video games almost since video games were invented but in the MCU era there hasn’t really been that many console and PC titles. I think the first ones were a bunch of mid-budget trash games from Sega, from before they knew the MCU was going to blow up the way it did.
Looking through a list of games the first one from after it was obvious was Guardians Of The Galaxy: The Telltale Series, which I’ve never heard of till now but was apparently a flop. Then there was Marvel Vs. Capcom: Infinite, a series a lot of people would’ve rather seen continue over Marvel Tōkon, but that didn’t do well either.
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Then we got Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, which had Spider-Man very prominent in the marketing but was a group game, and that didn’t do well. After that was Square Enix’s super expensive live service game Marvel’s Avengers, which… flopped.
I’m sure you must be picking up on a pattern here but it’s not that the games were bad. Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and Marvel’s Midnight Suns were both amazing, but they didn’t sell well at all. Even the scrolling beat ‘em-up Marvel Cosmic Invasion, which came out recently, just seemed to get completely ignored.
But why? I’ve been wracking my brain for a good reason, and I just can’t come up with one. Unless it’s just that people assume the games will be bad because they’re tie-ins. It could be that the appeal of the films is a lot more the characters and quips but Guardians Of The Galaxy and Midnight Suns were really good at that. Even the Avengers game was pretty good in its story mode.
Maybe people want something that’s part of the canon of the MCU, something with actors and voiceovers that are the same as the films, but that hasn’t stopped people liking the Spider-Man games, which are nothing like the movies.
It’s a real puzzle but the evidence is very clear: if it’s not a Spidey game or aimed at kids then your game is going down. Which begs the obvious question: does that include Wolverine? He is a very popular character but still nowhere close to Spider-Man and his game doesn’t sound like it’s as interesting to a non-fan, since Wolverine’s powers are basically just fighting.
And what other games are coming up? Blade, EA’s Iron Man game, and Marvel 1943: Rise Of Hydra. I’d put good money on all of them being flops. Whether they’re good games or not – and they’re good developers behind them so they probably are all good – it just doesn’t seem to matter. The public has spoken and they are not interested in Marvel games… I just wish I understood why.
By reader Trepsils
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