8 Video Games That "Couldn't Fail" (That Still Failed)
2. Marvel's Avengers
The commercial appeal of a co-op live service Avengers game speaks for itself. That is to say, if a publisher can't make even a mediocre Avengers game successful, what the hell are they even doing?
Releasing in September 2020, Marvel's Avengers seemed perfectly positioned to fill the void left by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which due to the pandemic went two years without releasing a new film between summer 2019 and summer 2021.
Audiences were hungry for more Marvel content, while the pandemic meant that people were at home and gaming, and the game was even being developed by an acclaimed AAA outfit - Tomb Raider reboot developers Crystal Dynamics.
It just seemed like the game would be a critic-proof success, yet this wasn't quite the case.
Marvel's Avengers was a strong seller out of the gate despite launching to lukewarm reviews, yet the repetitious, content-lacking nature of its live service gameplay loop caused the player count to swiftly fall off a cliff, all while general sales hit a hard stop.
The commercial underperformance led publisher Square Enix to report losses of $63 million during the fiscal year that it launched, before Marvel's Avengers was shut down and delisted in September 2023.
A three-year life cycle for a mega-budget video game clearly designed to be an ongoing experience is nothing short of disastrous - and something few observers saw coming.