Do Star Wars: Hunters and Marvel Rivals stand a chance?

Disney licenses out its properties for all sorts of games, AAA games, indie games, mobile games etc. But those games haven’t dipped much into the online competitive space.

But now two games featuring Disney’s two biggest IPs are launching in the extremely competitive free-to-play multiplayer space in the next few weeks and will either of them stand out?

Star Wars: Hunters seems to be the less ambitious of the two titles. It’s been in beta for quite awhile and is supposedly launching next month. It’s less ambitious in that it’s launching on the Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms, with mobile clearly being the lead. But while the mobile space is absolutely flooded with games of all types, expectations are probably lower than something launching across all major platforms. Star Wars: Hunters biggest hurdle already seems to be instead of using established characters, it’s all new people. Not necessarily a bad thing but an odd choice when Star Wars has such a deep well to pull from even if you want to go with more obscure characters.

Whether or not people will actually get attached to these new characters and the game itself is anyone’s guess, but I think expectations aren’t as high as if it was a title going to other more powerful platforms so it may have a chance to grow an audience over time. And whatever you think of them, Zynga knows how to make games in the mobile space that are popular and make money.

Marvel Rivals, even though it’s only launching on PC (and supposedly out this month even though May is almost over) seems way more ambitious but also its chances at success seem way slimmer.

Clearly, the budget is there. The game looks impressive and they are using a cool mix of well-known and obscure characters, that’s great. But, it’s a hero shooter. In 2024. It’s literally what if Overwatch but with Marvel characters. And Overwatch isn’t even doing that hot these days. And there just only seems to be so much space for this type of game. Because it’s meant to be if not your one game, your one multi-player game. I truly wonder, especially with Marvel interest kind of waning the last several years in general (and I say this as someone who watches the shows and movies and plays the games) if Marvel Rivals really has what it takes to at least comfortably carve out its own stake in this genre.

On top of this, Marvel Rivals has already been subject to some controversy with people who supposedly did some work for it accusing developer NetEase of not getting paid for their work. In addition, their agreement sent out to content creators who received early access having language that at least implied they couldn’t speak negatively of the game (NetEase has reportedly updated the language in the contract since then to be fair). So they are already starting on shaky ground to boot.

And ultimately, the big question is is this what fans of these IPs want to play? A Star Wars multi-player competitive shooter doesn’t seem too out of the realm of what might appeal to that crowd but mostly free-to-play on mobile? And outside of those Insomniac Spider-Man games, Marvel games haven’t been doing too hot period, is a blatant Overwatch clone the answer? Sure doesn’t seem like it.

It’s always hard to judge the fate of any game before it comes out, but it just doesn’t seem to me like Star Wars Hunters or Marvel Rivals are going to be the breakouts they need to be to establish themselves. I will probably play them at some point because hey, I probably will need the content. But it won’t be right at launch, and will there even be enough time for the dust to settle before these are either mostly forgotten or even shuttered? Hard to say…

That’s all for today, I will most likely have another post late next week so see ya real soon!