I guess now it's EA's time to shine once more. Being the bearer of major licenses for most of Star Wars titles, both old and new IPs, EA has been stomping ground with good releases lately like Squadron and Fallen Order. With a sequel coming for the latter. But EA wants a bigger chunk of the Disney licensing pie. That other pie happens to be Marvel.
It's not the first time EA would be publishing games under Marvel's namesake, Marvel Nemesis came out during the mid 2000s era along others like the Lord of the Rings Middle Earth series. It wasn't bad, and it was an obvious attempt for EA to flex their talents and exercise them for future titles. Today's climate is different, but for some reason, I think they can maybe pull this out.
With only an Iron Man game confirmed so far being worked on by Motive, then there's the rumored Black Panther game currently in development from a new studio created by ex-Monolith Productions founder. We now have one game left to figure out, as EA announced 3 major games coming out with this partnership.
Stiff Competition Ahead
Marvel has a mindshare that is so big, no game coming out can fail from what it seems. But, there's just too many video games to play out there, too. So EA might have to really step it up, so that they don't stumble because of the likes of Imsomniac's Spider-Man games. Which has been PlayStation's best-selling game, and the upcoming Marvel's Midnight Suns that is coming out this December.
EA has already confirmed that Dead Space and Star Wars Squadron developer, Motive is already in pre-production phase for the new Iron Man game. Poster, and the Iron Man suit was revealed. But no idea yet on what kind of game it'll be. Certainly not taking so many ideas from EA's other IPs like Anthem. Motive has been showing a lot of goodwill from all the demonstrations of the Dead Space remake, so I can vouch for them a little bit than anyone else at the moment.
The Black Panther game is stated to be open world, based on a data mine. Though it seems without T'challa. ex-vice president of Monolith Productions, Kevin Stephens, whose last game was Middle Earth: Shadow of War, is reported working with EA to create his own studio and that his new game happens to be the so-called new BP title. Though, usually new studios handling their first big IP like this isn't always a safe bet. But with EA's money, and the good track record of Stephens should be reassuring. One would hope.
Square Enix tried to uphold the entire Marvel license by making The Avengers game. Which, just like the Justice League movie, fizzled out in the spotlight and was received pretty lukewarm. New DLCs introducing Black Panther came, as well PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man. Yet, none of these helped that game at all. I hope EA keeps up the good act while they can, with their experiences from Star Wars games, they should be able to knock this one out of the park.
Will Publishers Be Willing To Do Joint Projects?
I don't really believe something like this would be easy. History already tells us so much about how publishers think it'll be too risky to work with each other, with reasons being conflict of interest. Remember the time 20th Century Fox and Universal had to work in order to make the Halo movie? Yeah, that didn't happen because of similar reasons.
But I do think it's worth noting that just spreading the IPs like this, even if game's studios get to do what they want with them, with the freedom they'll receive, it'll make Marvel's job a lot harder. There was a reason why they tried to make an Avenger's game happen so fast.
Another example would be Sony, they just don't want anyone to touch their beloved Spider-Man IP that they've borrowed license from Marvel. Yet, MLB The Show from this year finally came multi-plat. If Sony is willing to play ball, maybe they could be more lenient too. I think individual stories would be great, an amazing example of that was already Guardians of the Galaxy game from Eidos Montreal. It would also work, if for Marvel's interest and ours, they'd make the other stories mash together for a team up. I can definitely see a blockbuster type of profit from this venture.
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