The Future Of Marvel Console Games Is Discussed At E3
Recently there has been much talk about what is going on with Marvel gaming, with Marvel’s approach to mobile games and the cancellation of Disney Infinity. During the Sony presentation at E3, a new Spider-Man game was announced and recently Jay Ong, (Marvel’s vice president of games) spoke with Polygon and gave some details about the future of Marvel video games as there is a ambitious plan to bring the superheroes to consoles.
“When I joined Marvel two years ago, I came in with a mandate to usher in a new era for Marvel Games. We have a treasure trove of the best superhero characters on earth. What can we do with this to create truly epic games? Is [Spider-Man] a signal of things to come? Oh, yes. Absolutely. And we can’t wait to tell the world about it.”
While the mobile and PC Marvel games have been very successful and offer Marvel a great opportunity to tie in with the movies, there hasn’t been many great Marvel games, but that will be changing as it was confirmed that there are multiple Marvel games in development. They are currently working with Telltale Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Warner Bros.’ TT Games and he indicated there’s a lot more in the works.
Marvel are picking partners for upcoming titles as they want to work with the best game developers and are being choosy about who they work with. He added that “One of the things we really focus on in terms of our new strategy is that we all believe that great games drive the brand and great games are what our fans really deserve. The question is, ‘How we can get there?’ The thing we landed on is to be really selective with who we partner with. Extremely selective. Right now I would say that out of every 10 opportunities we look at, we maybe do one.”
He continued to say “What we look at first and foremost is the talent level of partner. Are they world class in building the games we’re talking about? They have to have world-class talent. They have to be able to invest the resources to make that talent sing. Equally important is, do they have passion for the IP they’re working on? Do they share the same ambition? Do they love the character? We look for passion, that comes through in the first 30 seconds. One of our mantras is authenticity; it’s easy to make a game with Spider-Man on the label, but it’s much harder to make it truly authentic in a way that reflects Peter Parker, the character.”
Marvel games have historically tied in with movies and many of those games suffered from quality as they were pushed to market for that date, but that isn’t where the upcoming console games are going. “We are absolutely obsessed about [quality], That is our North Star. We always say ‘Great is not good enough. We’re going for truly epic.'”
It looks as if Marvel have learned from their mistakes and that console games won’t be as tied into the movie as much, he added “in this modern day and age, that model doesn’t work anymore. “Things like [games] you cannot under-resource. You can’t not give the development time … to do justice to the game. We think, ‘How do we make the game better? How do we help our partners make the game better?'”
It certainly sounds like Marvel have got a solid plan for the future of their video games, with the additional content that can be added with DLC and updates, games are able to be tied in with new movies and events easily, but console games require good content. Looking at the success of other superhero games from DC, like the Batman Arkham and Injustice games, it is clear that these games are much more successful than a cheap tie in game. Which I do believe works better with mobile titles, with new costumes, characters and content being added.
I’m certainly excited to see where Marvel is going in the future and hearing these words from the people running Marvel games, does feel me with confidence.
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