With the new wave of layoffs affecting EA, the publisher has decided to clean up its projects and even its overall philosophy. Will the two Marvel games in development be buried?
2024 is off to a very bad start for the video game industry and the nightmare continues for developers. After a catastrophic year 2023 with mass layoffs, the trend is not reversing and it is even worse. Unfortunately. PlayStation has fired 900 people and no studio is spared, not even those that are wildly successful like Naughty or Insomniac Games. EA also announced that it was letting go of 670 employees and reviewed its game schedule. Projects will never see the light of day like the two promised Marvel games?
EA’s two big Marvel games buried or saved?
Despite the whole Star Wars Battlefront 2 affair, Disney has renewed its confidence in EA to develop two Marvel games and not just any games. The publisher is in charge of offering his vision of one of the most cult superheroes, Iron Man. A 100% solo experience whose solo production started some time ago. To carry out this ambitious project, which is already expected around the corner, the company turned to EA Motive, the studio behind Dead Space Remake. It is a single-player, third-person, action-adventure game with a complete focus on narrative. But beyond that, there is no other information, let alone images.
The second Marvel title in development at EA is Black Panther. A single-player action-adventure game, also in third person, and open world. This time, the reins have been handed over to Cliffhanger Games, a studio created from scratch and led by Kevin Stephens. Former Vice President of Monolith Productions (Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War). A team made up of developers who have worked on Call of Duty, God of War and the two Middle-earth apps.
But with the cancellation of the Star Wars game The Mandalorian, we are entitled to wonder if Marvel’s Iron Man and Marvel’s Black Panther are still in development. And the answer is yes according to our colleagues at IGN. Moreover, some developers who were on this Mandalorian project were reassigned to Marvel titles. On the other hand, even in the case of success, not sure that EA will continue. The publisher having declared that it wanted to move away from licensed games.