Looking at Marvel Entertainment over the last ten years, it is hard to believe that at one time the company was on the verge of bankruptcy in the early 90's. Since then, Marvel Studios was established, the company was bought by Disney, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken over the film market, leading to other companies finding properties to establish their own shared universes. Now, Marvel is looking to expand into the gaming sphere in a massive partnership with Square Enix.
Time to assemble
The partnership between the two companies was announced as a multi-year deal, with Square Enix set to create multiple games based on their characters, leading off with an Avengers project.
This was shown in a teaser that was released concurrent with the announcement, giving glimpses of scarred battleground that teases the original four cinematic Avengers -- Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Thor. The teaser itself is short, but also reveals that the first game in this partnership will be developed by "Tomb Raider" vets Crystal Dynamics and "Deus Ex" leads Eidos Montreal. These teams have been key to Square Enix's success over the last few years, providing game series that appeal to more Western audiences beyond their flagship "Final Fantasy" series.
Disney rules everything
This is just another deal in a slew of video game-related deals and announcements made over the last few years, with Disney and their subsidiary companies like Marvel and Lucasfilm reaching out to major developers and publishers to bring their properties to gaming in bigger and better fashion.
The best example of this was the deal struck between Disney and EA following the purchase of Lucasfilm that gave the publisher exclusive rights to develop and publish "Star Wars" games, which started with 2015's "Star Wars Battlefront." Marvel also took aggressive steps in looking to license their characters to developers with the goal of creating better games, with Insomniac's PS4 exclusive "Spider-Man" game and Telltale Games' upcoming "Guardians of the Galaxy" series leading the charge. So while an exclusive deal of this size is surprising, it definitely fits in with Marvel and Disney's goal of ruling all pop culture.
