Current Events > Marvel's Avengers hasn't yet recouped its development costs

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.ign.com/articles/marvels-avengers-hasnt-recouped-its-development-costs-yet

Marvel's Avengers sales have been lower than expected, and the game hasn't yet recouped its development costs, leading to an estimated 7 billion (approximately $67 million USD) operating loss in Square Enix's HD Games segment during the last financial quarter.
Company president Yosuke Matsude explained in a newly translated results briefing, "Sales of Marvels Avengers were lower than we had expected and unable to completely offset the amortization of the games development costs."

Game analyst David Gibson previously explained that the company sold 60% of its planned units, and that the numbers implied the game cost around $100 million to make.

Responding to an investor's question on the subject, Matsuda clarified that - had Avengers not been released in that quarter - the company would have made a profit. That comes down to both development and marketing costs:

"In addition to the amortization of that games development costs," explained Matsuda, "another significant factor associated with the title was the fact that we undertook a major advertising campaign at the time of its launch to make up for delays in our marketing efforts resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a certain amount of development costs still to be amortized in 3Q, but we want to recoup it by growing our sales going forward."
Matsuda doesn't offer concrete plans, but said the hope is that updates will help drive new sales: "We hope to make up for slow initial sales by offering ample additional content to grow our sales." Last week, developer Crystal Dynamics announced the December release date for its first post-launch hero and campaign, announced another, and potentially teased other heroes to come beyond that.

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Meanwhile, Genshin Impact was made with the same budget ( 100 million) and recouped its development costs within 2 weeks, and is now printing money for its Developer lol

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Like I feel bad for the rank and file folks who worked on it

That said, good. I hope this teaches game companies not to half-ass a product and slap in GaaS as a solution to their sloppy as hell dev practices

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Spooking posted...

Good news. Same thing needs to happen with 2K and their shitty, yearly releases.

Yeah but those require almost no money to make because it's just rereleased every year

Doom_Art posted...

Like I feel bad for the rank and file folks who worked on it

That said, good. I hope this teaches game companies not to half-ass a product and slap in GaaS as a solution to their sloppy as hell dev practices

Yeah, kinda feel the same way. I tried the free beta and it didn't feel satisfying enough to want to play, and I'm not the type of person to want to play a game on a daily basis for lootboxes and mtx shit.

Crystal Dynamics is a good developer but this project idea was doomed from the start.
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Dunno why companies keep trying to push the games as a service model when every single one of them has been trash

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Shoulda waited to put it on the PS5

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LordFarquad1312 posted...

Dunno why companies keep trying to push the games as a service model when every single one of them has been trash

They think it's a money maker just because some of them were financially successful.

But yeah, this just goes to show that it isn't a magical money printing machine.
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Good

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They better buy YoshiP a really good back brace for his Christmas gift for the amount that he's carrying this company.

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This is what happens when you take a popular IP, make it low-rent, and try to make it Destiny. Everyone saw this coming.

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for a moment i thought this was about the films and was wondering how 2 billion dollars wasn't enough

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DemonBuffet posted...

Meanwhile, Genshin Impact was made with the same budget ( 100 million) and recouped its development costs within 2 weeks, and is now printing money for its Developer lol

So...Avengers should've been a gacha game? What's the relevance?
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Good.

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Good. Bad games with anti-consumer models deserve to flop.
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Slayer_22 posted...

So...Avengers should've been a gacha game? What's the relevance?

The relevance is that western games are shitty.

Dingydang166 posted...

The relevance is that western games are shitty.

Lol. If the measure of virtue is sales, western games are exponentially better than eastern ones.

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Dingydang166 posted...

The relevance is that western games are shitty.

What a generalization. Should I bring up shit tier Japanese games or something to combat it or...?
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What a disaster...

Slayer_22 posted...

What a generalization. Should I bring up shit tier Japanese games or something to combat it or...?

Find me an eastern game with a budget this big that failed this hard.

Dingydang166 posted...

Find me an eastern game with a budget this big that failed this hard.

Shenmue.

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good.

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Almost like they designed it from the ground up to generate micro-transaction revenue and they forgot to make the actual gameplay varied and interesting.

Remember when The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction came out, and it was fucking rad, and everybody loved it?

Hell, remember when Spider-Man for the PS4 came out, was fucking rad, and everybody loved it?

It's like games that are developed to be fun are always going to be better than games that were made as frameworks to rake in long-term "recurrent consumer spending."

When a game is designed from the ground up to make money, it's gonna have a really high chance of scaring off its audience long before they start turning a profit. Fun game first, monetization later.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

Fun game first, monetization later.

Yeah, exactly. I'm willing to throw money at a game I really like, both for the experience and to support the dev. But I'm not going to burn money in hopes that a game will eventually be fun.

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Lol it's especially sad because they actually got the tie in and still did worse than ultimate alliance 3

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Balrog0 posted...

Lol it's especially sad because they actually got the tie in and still did worse than ultimate alliance 3

I always forget that that game exists.

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If your product can sell millions of copies and make $70 million dollars and still flop then you suck at making games.

The entire businsess model is bananas.

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Slayer_22 posted...

So...Avengers should've been a gacha game? What's the relevance?

The Marvel gachas probably make more money than this game did on a yearly basis

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Thats what they fucking get.
make a soulless shill of a game with a huge brand attached to them and expecting money machine, but instead get fucked out of millions.
Get fucking wrecked.

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