Square Enix seems to have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on production of Marvel’s Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy titles.
Square Enix has become the most talked about topic of recent days, mainly due to the fact that it has now sold off three of its major game development studios in the West and related intellectual properties to Embracer. Group. The company also did not clarify the detailed situation of the incident or its plans, even making the discussions around the purchase and sale agreements become more heated and mysterious.
However, other new information about Square Enix continues to come out and according to MST Financial, this publisher has lost 200 million USD, equivalent to about 4 thousand 500 billion VND between the two releases of Marvel’s titles. . This makes things clearer as to why Square Enix will be selling both Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, the studios that have worked on Marvel’s Avengers and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
Specifically, while Guardians of the Galaxy received critical acclaim, it seems that the Avengers were judged to be less popular and dragged down all of the company’s big plans. Analysis of the situation by MST Financial has shown that the company has lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the production and marketing of these games, and this seems like a hard pill to swallow for Square Enix. Sure, Guardians of the Galaxy can still build its fan base through being free on Xbox Game Pass, but that seems too little and too late to make a difference, given both IPs. This is now sold out to Embracer Group.
Now that Embracer has acquired Square Enix’s western studios, the company can focus on projects that seem more meaningful to them, such as JRPG anime titles and the Final Fantasy series. Square Enix is still holding the rights to Outriders, Just Cause, and Life is Strange, though, which implies that IPs that are historically relatively more successful than the other two Marvel games will still be kept.
One of the theories put forward is that Square Enix may be looking to experiment with blockchain technology on a larger scale, as the CEO of Square Enix has expressed an interest in NFT as well as video games. “play for money”. Now that it’s clear that the company has lost a significant amount of money to the Marvel IPs, the idea may not be too far off from the company’s plans.
In related news, Marvel’s Avengers got off to a pretty bad start to 2022, and there’s currently no word on whether Embracer Group wants to continue updating the game’s widely criticized online model. This new publisher can always try to improve the game, but it’s a huge investment that may end up not yielding any returns. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy won’t at least be free of these problems, as it’s a casual offline action game with a focus on plot and no online game elements.
See also: Is Square Enix making itself more susceptible to acquisition?