The Return of X-Men?

dylflon

The month of March saw a steady flow of X-Men added to the ranks of another Marvel mobile game: Contest of Champions.

Archangel, Iceman, and Psylocke have all been added to the game which leads me to wonder if the ban on X-characters is finally coming to a close. 

Obviously since Contest is a fairly simple fighting game, it's easier to add new characters without upsetting game balance which would explain their quick rollout. Once the Guardians tie-in is over, will we finally see some new X-Men to coincide with ResurrXion? 

Straycat

After all the Guardians there will be the Spiderman movie, so I think some tie in with that would be more likely. After that I guess there aren't any new movies or tv shows until Thor so they could start doing non MCU things.

Jarvind

I looked and CoC seems to be run by a different studio - just because that studio bought the license for Archangel doesn't mean Demi/D3 has.

Dormammu

I have no idea what Demi's license with Marvel allows, but based on the promotional tie-ins at Marvel.com I'm going to guess that Marvel has to give them some sort of stamp of final approval for any new characters, but once they have that 'ok' Demi can make multiple versions using that character (again, just a wild guess).

If that is the case, we have some hope because Marvel is definitely back in the X-Men business after DC stole the overall comic market share for the first time in almost six decades. Trying to replace mutants with Inhumans didn't go over with fans so now they're back to putting Xavier's merry band back to the forefront.

Maybe that means we'll see more mutants in MPQ, maybe not. Only time will tell. I sure hope so because my girl Rogue has been too-long absent from this game.

JHawkInc

First, I don't believe the "Ban on X-Men" exists. There's definitely some stuff going on between Marvel and Fox, with Marvel downplaying the X-Men (and the Fantastic Four) everywhere they can since Fox has the movie rights, but it's never seemed to be a complete BAN, you know?

Case in point, Contest of Champions. Didn't come into existence until after this "Marvel vs Fox" thing had already started, but it contains loads of X-Men characters. Wiki says 95 playable characters, 6 unplayable, and a handful of rumored/confirmed future characters. Of those, for X-Men, they have Phoenix, Beast, Cable, Colossus (twice, one from when he got Juggernaut's powers), Cyclops (twice, both versions we have), Deadpool (twice, same two as MPQ), Gambit, Iceman, Magneto (twice, same deal), Nightcrawler, Old Man Logan, Storm, Wolverine, X-23, Magik, Scarlet Witch, a separate Weapon X Wolverine, with Dark Phoenix, Dazzler, a second Scarlet Witch, and "more 90's X-men" as upcoming characters.

My guess is that our X-Men drought was brought on by the characters released when 5*s were new. Specifically, we got Iceman, Cyclops, X-23, Old Man Logan, and Phoenix in a straight run, and some people complained about too many X-Men characters, and shortly thereafter had a stretch with Black Suit Spidey, Green Goblin, Miles, Spider-Gwen, and Venom (AND Venom Bomb), and people were shouting "too much Spidey".

I think they buckled down to focus on a lot of "anything but X-Men or Spidey", and just haven't been able to swing back around now that we're starving for more of both (a combination of long-term planning to get from "who should we add?" through concepts and designs and development and licensing and artwork and programming and then quality control (playtesting, tweaking/adjusting powers or artwork, getting Marvel's final stamp of approval, etc). Wouldn't surprise me if there's a 4-6 month turnaround from "we definitely want this character in the game" to the actual release event (especially if leaked/spoiled info is anything to go by, since right at this moment we seem to have enough leaks to get us through June, that would indicate characters are "ready" for a month or two before they actually hit the game).

BUT, given Cthulhu's comment HERE: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/60362/hawkeye-clint-barton/p3, and the increase in X-Men related things in Marvel Comics (Inhumans vs X-Men, ResurrXion, the new Blue/Gold teams, etc), I'm hopeful we'll get some new X-Men, and maybe instead of "long stretch of nothing but X-Men" and then "no X-Men for over a year" it can mellow out to a more reasonable "occasionally we get X-Men", or something. LOT of room for new X-Men from the current comics alone (ie, not going back and hitting up 90's Gambit/Nightcrawler/Rogue). Kitty leading Gold Team (make her count as a teammate for Guardians of the Galaxy for good measure), Blue Team could give us another "Teen" X-Men (Angel/Beast/Cyke to go along with our current Jean and Iceman), Cable's got his own line, Weapon X could give us Sabertooth, maybe classic Iceman could be an outright 5* Omega Level mutant, etc. Combine what's going on in the comics with all of the characters people request (ie, those 90's X-Men again, for starters), it kinda feels inevitable that we'll get some X-Men at SOME POINT this year.

Given the X-Men drought has been going on slightly longer than the Spidey drought, and we're due for some Spidey to go with the movie, I'm betting we get some of both this year. Though with Homecoming in July, Spidey might come first.