"No current plans" for more Sega-published Marvel games

Marvel has gone cold on a once productive relationship with Sega.

"There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by Sega," Marvel's vice present of games production TQ Jefferson told The Hollywood Reporter.

Sega published licensed tie-ins for Captain America, Iron Man and Thor on multiple platforms. None were very warmly received.

While Jefferson didn't comment on why the two companies had parted ways, he did offer some general thoughts on the state of tie-in games.

"In my opinion, the biggest afflictions affecting movie-licensed games is the amount of development time and a strict adherence to retelling the story of the film in the form of a game," he said.

"The former is easy to understand - less development time means less time to design, produce and polish the game, resulting in a poor or lesser-quality experience. The latter is a little more subtle, but I can sum it up thusly: If a development team were to follow a film’s plot line to the letter, then you would have a two-hour experience with a bunch of thugs and one boss fight. That’s simply not how we define 'movie licensed console game,' now or ever.

"In order to hit the expected amount of gameplay, you need to embellish, add additional characters, story, subplots and objectives to make a more robust and satisfying experience. That’s where a lot of movie licenses fall down – lack of content."

The next console release with a Marvel license is Beenox's The Amazing Spider-Man, published by Activision. Jefferson seems enthusiastic about the pairing based on past success.

"I think it’s arguable that Activision [and] Neversoft’s Spider-Man for PlayStation 1 helped reintroduce superheroes to the minds of gamers," he said.

The executive said the upcoming Avengers film would spawn more than one game.

"We just launched Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook; which is just the tip of the iceberg," he said.

"This is the first in a much larger effort to support the Avengers franchise across not just one but multiple video game touch points. The Avengers are bigger than just one game, and we’re planning to allow consumers to enjoy The Avengers regardless of their preference in gameplay style or platform. Look for more announcements in the weeks to come."

Thanks, GamesIndustry.