In a surprise announcement earlier today, Electronic Arts officially revealed that they’ve entered into a “multi-title collaboration” with Marvel Games. This long-term partnership will see the Redwood City-based publishing house produce “at least three new action games” over the next several years. The first title to come out of this deal will be the Iron Man game currently in production at Motive Studios.
The press release clearly points out that each of these games will tell “an original story set within the Marvel universe,” though that doesn’t rule out some level of interconnectivity between them. Rather, this approach feels like an indirect response to the lackluster performance of Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers.
The Iron Man game underway at Motive will be a single-player, third-person, action-adventure title that focuses on a single character. The lead on the game, Olivier Proulx, was part of the Eidos Montreal team that worked on last year’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which received critical acclaim from both fans and critics.
Disney and EA have a somewhat uneven history when collaborating on games in the past. EA was the sole purveyor of Star Wars games for many years, but their stewardship of the license left many fans unhappy. They’ve only released four games so far, with a fifth on the way early next year: Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Star Wars: Squadrons, with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor yet to come.
While the latter two titles were well-received, EA’s reputation suffered greatly during this stint, and Disney has since expanded their development efforts when it comes to Star Wars. Marvel fans shouldn’t fret, though, as this new arrangement with EA won’t have the same level of exclusivity. Just look at Sony’s success with Marvel’s Spider-Man to see why they’ll never sequester this universe with just one developer.
EA’s forthcoming Marvel titles are still far in the future, but there’s plenty of comic-book goodness to go around with the recent release of Gotham Knights. And we hopefully won’t have to wait too long for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 to hit PlayStation 5.
