Square Enix: Crystal Dynamics was the wrong studio for Marvel’s Avengers. There is no good idea to put a single player studio on multiplayer games

Marvel’s Avengers was released a year ago and offered players an interesting story, but it was a somewhat awkward experience as a whole. One month after the game’s release, the PC version started having issues with matchmaking and the sales numbers never picked up. Regarding the most recent quarterly report, Square Enix spoke about the Avengers position and simply said that Crystal Dynamics developers were a poor choice.

Crystal Dynamics previously worked with single-player experiences such as the masterful Tomb Raider and Gex games, and Marvel’s Avengers was the studio’s first major multiplayer project. According to Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda, Square should have realized that it might be a good idea to pick the right studio for the right purpose, and in this case, Crystal Dynamics wasn’t.
However, the adoption of the GaaS model highlighted issues we are likely to face in future game development efforts such as the need to select game designs that match the unique themes and tastes of our studios and development teams. While the new challenge we faced with this title led to a disappointing result, we’re sure the GaaS approach will grow in importance as games become more service-oriented. How to begin creating new experiences by incorporating this trend into our game design is a fundamental question that we will need to answer in the future.