Square Enix’s recent financial results reveal that despite critical success, Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy underperformed for the company.
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Documents concerning Square Enix’s financial results from the first three quarters of 2022’s financial year (March 2021 to December 2021) have been released, and the company says Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy underperformed at launch.
“Despite strong reviews, the game’s sales on launch undershot our initial expectations,” says the report. “However, sales initiatives that we kicked off in November 2021 and continued into the new year have resulted in sales growth, and we intend to work to continue to expand sales to make up for the title’s slow start.”
When asked why Square Enix generated more revenue from “HD games” in quarter three than in quarter one, president Yosuke Matsuda said that it was due to the release of new titles like Guardians Of The Galaxy.
Square Enix also said it has multiple new titles planned to launch in quarter four of this year as well.
The game’s lack of desired success may have come down to the release of Marvel’s Avengers in 2020. Despite a steady flow of content many were unimpressed by the game when it launched, with that sentiment possibly carrying over to Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy.
Last month it was revealed that staff at Eidos-Montréal wanted to work on a Guardians Of The Galaxy game because of an “underdog” mentality.
Senior creative director Jean-François Dugas admitted the studio felt “that Guardians of the Galaxy was a team of underdogs that was fitting our personality.
“When we were working on Deus Ex, it was like ‘Nah, there’s no chance they were going to make a good Deus Ex’,” he continued. “And now with Guardians ‘[people think] there’s no chance that Guardians will be good.’ We feel like we’re a bit like those kind of underdogs, so we started with that franchise and we got into it, got excited by all the possibilities with it.”
The NME review of the game scored it three out of five stars, praising the story-telling and humour but finding the clunky combat somewhat of a chore.
In other news, the soundtracks to both Persona 5 Royal and Strikers are now available to stream on Spotify.
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