Marvel Avengers: What caused the massive player drop (and what did not)

WHY IT IS – Square Enix Hubris

A decade ago, Square Enix dropped a game called Final Fantasy 14. They dropped it hard. It was a massive failure. The setup was terrible leaving some played to even give up before they even got into the game. The game itself was a bland mess filled with issues, repetition and massive amounts of boring areas.

After a while they took the game down for almost a full year and then rebuilt it and now, despite the overwhelming odds, Final Fantasy 14 is a big success for Square Enix with people paying $15 a month to continue playing. It has a very dedicated based of fans and Square Enix loves it’s money printer.

I genuinely believe this added to their hubris. Square Enix has a history with taking their sweet time with things. Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, etc. It’s something that Square Enix fans have accepted and willing to put up with like the bizarre abusive relationship it is.

Square Enix, however, has not met comic fans. These are people that expect comic books to come out regularly either weekly or monthly depending on the book. These are the people that, for the last ten years, expected Marvel to constantly drop a continuous stream of high budget, action films staring loyal representations of their favorite characters. Comic fans have very different expectations.

So while Square Enix has constantly bragged about fan-favorite Kate Bishop coming, she’s a month late. Clint Barton is nowhere in site either. Sony exclusive Spider-man hasn’t even been shown as a preview. And the constant push back has pretty much made it clear that the Wakanda add-on isn’t happening until possibly late 2021 or maybe even 2022 if they keep going at this rate.

And Square Enix seems to be perfectly chill about this. Even saying that they pushed back Kate Bishop to “help make the most fun game possible”. That struck me as odd because at that point I was just like, “I am not having fun anymore, please just give me Kate Bishop.”

But Square Enix, as always seems incredibly confident that no matter how long it takes them they’ll get it right eventually and people will come running back to them. Regardless of how much analytics should be telling them otherwise.