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Game Dev Unchained24 Feb 2022

Guardians of the Galaxy Disappointing Sales | Games ReCAP

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Square Enix has officially labeled the sales of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy as disappointing, despite the title winning the Best Narrative award at the 2021 Game Awards.
02
Square Enix has a recurring history of labeling high-quality titles as commercial failures, including the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Marvel’s Avengers, and Outriders.
03
The Outriders title failed to provide royalties to its developers despite achieving a player base of 3.5 million people.
04
Development studios are facing increased pressure for commercial underperformance despite having limited influence over the marketing strategies and budget constraints that dictate a game's financial success.
05
Internal financial benchmarks for major AAA titles have shifted, with publishers now frequently requiring 10 to 12 million units sold to justify rising development costs, compared to previous standards of 5 million.
06
The industry is facing a sustainability crisis where unrealistic sales targets for non-juggernaut franchises threaten the viability of mid-to-large-scale game development.

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Transcript

game of the year contender marvel's guardians of the galaxy is disappointing welcome to another games recap join us on our discussion live every day at 11 a.m pst as i rant about today's biggest news all right let's get right to it publisher square enix is not happy with the sales of guardians of the galaxy despite being highly praised by critics and gamers alike according to a recent financial filing from publisher square enix marvel's guardians of the galaxy underperform unstated sales target sounds like a marketing problem to me developed by idols montreal and released last october guardians of the galaxy is highly and tightly paced linear third-person action game you play as star lord and you can give directions to your team members

while in combat overall the game is well polished and has a very good script that even won the team a best narrative trophy at the 2021 game awards square enix reports and even championed the critical praise in the financial report saying despite strong reviews the game sales on launch undershot are initial expectations so this is kind of like a deja vu if you guys remember in 2013 when there was a tomb raider reboot that even sold five million uh within like two three weeks or something right but swearing still say it was disappointing because they had higher expectations so in a time where we were going through the ps5 phase this was really alarming as you can imagine selling 5 million used to be awesome now it's not right and you can see this trend kind of transitioning into the next ps5

so tomb raider uh unfortunately is kind of setting this uh pace where a lot of games coming from square enix camp is just not hitting on par to what the expectations are so what that also means is like if you remember hitman uh three in particular the latest game from isle interactive which caused a lot of controversy because square enix basically pulled out and said they don't want to fit the bill and instead that team had to publish things independently and within a week of uh release the team was able to kind of recoup its development costs so that's kind of like ha ha ha ha to uh square enix for not believing in them uh also in 2020 you guys remember uh there was the marvel adventures game right the first of the two marvel's partnership between uh square enix and marbles that fell short of expectation

as well that didn't sell well they're still making a marketing push for it but the truth is nobody wants to play it right uh if you think about last spring in particular the publisher or the the game developer people can fly uh they also had issues and they were kind of a very well veteran makeup of team where they were shipping a bullet storm but with outrider their second outing despite a lot of wide report and taking the world by storm uh it quickly uh was able to gather up three-point feeling uh 3.5 million players with even square saying that it was on track to become the company's next major franchise but the by august of last year the team has yet to receive any royalties from square enix so this is all alarming in many different fronts as you guys can imagine uh if you are a publisher like square

enix and you have awesome development teams which are being bought out by every other major microsoft or sony company this can be an issue where it's just not enough you know there are high expectations from these publishers that are unrealistic right it's hitting marks that most games would be super happy to get but even with this latest release with guardians of galaxy despite the development team doing a kick-ass job it looks great it plays great and the script even won awards the publisher is still putting to blame the developers behind the game which you know they only have so little control in terms of marketing i would even say that yes development cost probably ballooned up to a certain extent but that is still up to the publisher to kind of put the constraints because now the development team has only concentrated on making sure that the

game itself is awesome what more can they do right so this is a big problem going into this next-gen console cycle as you guys can imagine right if you're a team that is doing quadruple a or aaa uh you're only concentrating on making the game great right but now you have to worry about how publishers have lost the expectations that you can never meet uh now you're out on the curb again uh with your whole team thinking that you did a good job but unfortunately that didn't happen so this is what is very important obviously i want to highlight this is something that i do see becoming a major issue going into the next few years where yeah five million used to be good on the ps4 phase not so great on ps5 ps5 has to be at least eight to ten million now we're looking at 10 to 12 quite possibly to cover the development cost it just seems impractical and it's unfortunate because

we always like myself like to play these huge blockbuster games but if your development team hasn't really grown and we're doing all we can with the toolset to kind of make these games bigger without adding more costs in terms of bodies in these seats it makes it really tough to continue making these games i know a lot of people out there is like well i mean i like independent games i like smaller games anyways what well how does this affect me i mean if you want the continued growth of the industry you need all flavors uh that to to be at play here not just smaller games but bigger games uh and it seems like we're getting to the state where unless it is a call of duty or a sequel of a franchise game even tomb raider repo had an issue but uh something like marvel's uh guardian of the galaxy which was and is a good game uh having trouble like this it just

really makes it difficult for us developers to kind of look ahead and be kind of hopeful that everything will pan out well that that's pretty much today's games recap as always guys leave you know your opinion in the discussion i would love to hear it uh as always this is just a tidbit i'll see you guys tomorrow [Music] you

Summary

Square Enix has publicly identified the sales performance of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy as disappointing, despite the title receiving significant critical acclaim and winning the Best Narrative award at the 2021 Game Awards. This assessment highlights a recurring pattern within the publisher’s portfolio, where high-quality, well-received titles fail to meet internal financial projections. The situation mirrors previous performance issues with the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, the Marvel’s Avengers project, and the Outriders title, the latter of which struggled to provide royalties to its developers despite reaching 3.5 million players.

The core issue stems from a disconnect between publisher expectations and the realities of the modern gaming market. As the industry transitions into the current console generation, the financial threshold for success has shifted significantly. Where five million units were once considered a strong performance, current internal benchmarks for major AAA titles now frequently demand sales in the range of 10 to 12 million units to justify ballooning development costs. This trend creates an environment where even successful, polished games are deemed failures if they do not achieve massive, blockbuster-level returns.

This misalignment places immense pressure on development studios, which are often held responsible for commercial underperformance despite having limited control over marketing strategies and budget constraints. The industry faces a growing sustainability crisis as publishers set increasingly unrealistic sales targets that few franchises outside of established juggernauts can consistently reach. This dynamic threatens the future of mid-to-large-scale game development, as the current economic model risks alienating talented teams and stifling the diversity of titles available to consumers.