Marvel and Square Enix Team Up To Chase The Mighty Dollar

By Rich Stanton on at

The American entertainment giant Marvel and Japanese videogames developer / publisher Square Enix today announced a multi-game collaboration, which begins with an Avengers game. The short trailer is little more than a dull teaser, showing nothing of the game itself, but at least it does flash up the logos of Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal - two of Square Enix's strongest development studios.

Marvel began as a comic book company but, in recent decades, has found enormous success as a movie studio that uses its world-famous comic book characters. The films hit a certain summer blockbuster quality bar, but the accompanying videogames either don't happen or are universally terrible. Marvel has had an interest in the games industry for a long time, and there are several historical games that did the characters justice (Spider-Man on the Mega Drive and Playstation, Treyarch's Spider-Man 2, the X-Men Konami arcade cabinet, the Marvel Vs Capcom series...) But there's been a lot more junk, especially the Activision Spider-Man games, so you can see why this makes a lot of sense for Marvel.

As for Square Enix? These properties are bankable, and these studios have proven their worth on other big properties. This could be a match made in heaven for the Japanese publisher and, as long as some decent games come out of it, we'll all be happy.