Slashdot Mirror
EA Vs. Marvel Fighting Games Announced
ADD Boy writes "Reuters reports that Electronic Arts and Marvel have come together to 'develop a series of fighting games pitting newly developed EA characters against Marvel superheroes like Spider-Man.'" This cross-media deal also sees Marvel "acting as licensing agent for the new [EA-created] characters and publishing comic books based on them", and "the deal includes more than 100 of Marvel's superhero characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men." However, the deal does not include the Hulk or Punisher characters, who are licensed to Vivendi and THQ respectively.
I'm not sure the article makes this clear, but I don't believe they'll be using existing EA characters - I think the plan is to create all-new superhero-style characters which 'belong' to Electronic Arts. Whether this is a brilliant creative move or a cynical IP-building cash-in is, of course, open to interpretation. :)
EA published a game called Ty the Tasmanian Tiger for all three current systems less than 1.5(year) ago. THAT sad state of affairs is the extent of their original character appeal.
Marvel, this is what you've done to yourself.
Square as an entity no longer exists, neither does their partnership with EA. To state the obvious, they merged with Enix to become Square Enix. No Square characters in EA games.