Guardians of the Galaxy sales failed to meet expectations

Guardians of the Galaxy sales failed to meet the expectations of publisher Square Enix, it has been revealed.

In the company’s latest financial results briefing ending March 31 2022, Square witnessed a promising year on year growth despite the industry climate changing as we step further out of a global lockdown.

One sector that didn’t perform as well for the publisher was its big budget HD games of 2021, including Outriders, NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139, and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. This should come as no major surprise considering these games had to contend with the previous fiscal year’s launch of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel’s Avengers.

Interestingly, Square specifically pointed to Guardians of the Galaxy as a weak link:

Despite strong reviews, the game’s sales on launch undershot our initial expectations. However, sales initiatives that we kicked off in November 2021 and continued into the new year have resulted in sales growth, and we intend to work to continue to expand sales to make up for the title’s slow start.

This isn’t the first time the Japanese gaming giant has dunked on the sales performance of an Eidos game. 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot – developed by Crystal Dynamics – famously sold far fewer copies than Square’s unreasonably high projections. Then, of course, there was Marvel’s Avengers – even with a long development cycle and a huge budget, the superhero game didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Guardians of the Galaxy saw a bump in popularity towards the end of 2021, helped by the aforementioned sales initiative. With a singleplayer focus and a superb story and characters written by Dan Abnett, it scored well among critics. Well, most of them – Aran couldn’t overlook some of the game’s evident flaws in our Guardians of the Galaxy review:

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a great portrayal of the space-faring heroes and a good game. We encountered some annoying bugs that are hopefully alleviated with patches, and it’s pretty linear, but this is an interstellar romp that you can enjoy across a few evenings.

Other intel gleaned from the briefing shows that Square has a number of unannounced titles in the pipeline. It will also consider reviewing its catalogue of older games for more potential remasters in future.

Source: Square Enix