Avengers Game Leaked by New Marvel Report

A new Avengers game is reportedly in the works according to a notable Marvel insider. Marvel is one of the pillars of pop culture right now thanks to its nearly 20-year domination in Hollywood with the MCU. Marvel really kicked off its cinematic domination with Blade in 1998, X-Men in 2000, and Spider-Man in 2002, but when Iron Man hit the scene, everything changed. An interconnected universe exploded in film, bringing all of these beloved comic characters together in live-action like any nerd’s dream. It took a while for Marvel to realize that its video games shouldn’t be movie tie-ins, though. Instead, it needed to figure out how to make its games just as successful independent of any connections to the MCU.

Things started to fall in place with Marvel’s Spider-Man for PlayStation in 2018 and there have been other good single-player Marvel games since then such as Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. There’s plenty more on the way too with Marvel’s Wolverine, a new Black Panther game, a Black Panther/Captain America game, and even a brand new Iron Man game from EA. However, Marvel stumbled with arguably one of its biggest swings: Marvel’s Avengers. The 2020 game was an immediate flop thanks to a rocky launch, unwanted live service elements, and a failure to keep the game consistently updated with good, meaningful content. It was a major disappointment that let down Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, but Marvel isn’t giving up.

Marvel Leaker Claims New Avengers Game Is in Development

Noted Marvel insider DanielRPK took to his Patreon to confirm that a brand new Avengers game is in development, but it isn’t related to Marvel’s Avengers. DanielRPK neglected to mention a developer or publisher, but it seems unlikely that Square Enix will be involved after the blunder that was Marvel’s Avengers. And although it was far better received, Guardians of the Galaxy also failed at a commercial level. One might assume that a PlayStation studio could be tasked with doing Avengers after succeeding so much with Spider-Man, but Xbox is also working on a Blade game. There are a lot of big studios that could take a crack at it.

Ultimately, it remains to be seen if this Avengers game will try to connect some of these Marvel games. Marvel Games VP Bill Rosemann told ComicBook in 2022 that Marvel does not try to force any developer to connect its games together as part of a larger universe, noting they want teams to be able to blow up the moon if they wish without impacting another game. However, the power of the multiverse also exists and could theoretically combine EA’s takes on Iron Man and Black Panther with PlayStation’s Spider-Man, or something along those lines. It may be too much of a headache to try and figure out the continuity of all these games across a bunch of different studios, but the Avengers in of itself is an ambitious concept.

In the early 2010s, THQ was working on an Avengers game that would’ve seen the heroes going up against the skrulls in an adaptation of the Secret Invasion storyline. It was a first-person action game and would’ve released alongside The Avengers film in the summer of 2012, but it wasn’t actually connected to that movie. It would’ve been a four-player co-op game with Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Thor with plans to add characters like Black Widow, Ant-Man, and the Fantastic Four as unlockable characters or NPCs. Unfortunately, THQ began to struggle financially during the game’s development and reached out to Marvel for help in funding the project, but it was instead canceled.

As such, the Avengers have had a troubled road to getting a worthwhile AAA video game. There are a lot of lessons to be learned and superhero video games have come a long way in the last decade alone. One can hope that whoever is trusted to bring the Avengers to life this time will finally stick the landing.