With the recent failure of live-service games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Concord, a lot of industry analysts seem to think that the heyday of the live-service shooter is over, but lo and behold, Marvel Rivals is pretty much in that genre, and it just had a massive opening weekend.
While there are a hundred things people can say about Concord's failure, Marvel Rivals director Thaddeus Sasser gave his thoughts on why his game worked and Firewalk Studios didn’t.
Marvel Rivals v Concord: Dusk of Live Service Shooters
In a recent interview with Video Gamer (via VGC), Sasser explained that Concord’s possible failure was because of a ‘switching cost’ that didn’t have ‘enough unique value’ for people to jump over to that game. He explains, “There’s a switching cost… I’ve already invested in Overwatch, I’ve got 15 skins for Pharah, I’m not going anywhere.”
With Concord costing $40 at launch and being based on a completely new IP, there was a lot of legwork for the marketing team to do to be able to push players to purchase an AAA game. What’s more, the genre is incredibly oversaturated nowadays. People thought the DC IP would be enough to push players to check out Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. However, after some poor reviews and a repetitive gameplay mechanic, Suicide Squad never really managed to reach the peak it hoped for.
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+ 2Why is Marvel Rivals So Successful?
Admittedly, many other fans think that pitting Marvel Rivals against Concord was an unfair comparison. After all, one big factor that fans think is different from Rivals’ success is that it’s based on a billion-dollar IP. Concord was trying to launch a whole new universe, but even Sony wasn’t keen on hyping up the game—resulting in a poor launch.
Some say that Rivals wouldn’t be as popular without the Marvel characters, and it’s honestly a fair assessment. The Marvel brand has decades of material behind it, from comics to movies and toys. By the time the game launched, everyone was already asking for specific characters to come to the game.
That said, IP is only one factor in a game’s success. Avengers: A-Day was banking on being the Marvel live service game when it launched, but after poor reviews, it managed to tank the Marvel brand when it came to video games—even spoiling the reputation of critically acclaimed titles Guardians of the Galaxy and Midnight Sons.
click to enlarge + 2Who’s To Say?
If anything, even Sasser is unsure of what makes a successful game. He continues, “The truth is that I don’t think anybody can accurately predict this or the game industry would be radically different today.
“There’s a lot of games that come out that people are like, ‘it’s going to do well,’ then it flops, or people come out and go, ‘it’s going to flop,’ and it succeeds amazingly. So, I think it’s really hard to tell ahead of time and you’re always worried about that.”
Devs should try their best to deliver a solid game and ensure they have a solid marketing campaign behind it if they want a title to be massive.
Marvel Rivals is now playable for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5.
For more articles like this, take a look at our Marvel Rivals page.