Hero shooter smash hit Marvel Rivals already has dozens of playable characters to get to grips with, but the developer is far from finished adding to the roster.
In a recently published interview with Metro, director Guangyun Chen has described the team's aim for post-launch support, and it sounds like new heroes will arrive with impressive regularity.
"Every season we’ll be rolling out fresh seasonal stories, new maps, and new heroes," he said. "We’ll actually be breaking down each season into two halves. The length of one season is three months. And for each half of the season, we will introduce a new hero. We just eventually want to continue to enhance the experience, and, you know, keep everyone excited in our community."
That's right — players should expect a brand new Marvel character to join the game once every month and a half. Two per season, with each season lasting three months.
The free-to-play Marvel Rivals launched in early December with its full lineup available to all players, and it quickly found success. Season 1 began on 10th January 2025, adding Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman to the playable roster, as well as a new map, events, and more.
With The Human Torch and The Thing also planned to arrive later in Season 1, Marvel Rivals is expanding faster than Chen's stated cadence in its early stages, but adding eight new characters a year going forwards still seems like a lot.
Are you excited for the future of Marvel Rivals? Stretch into the comments section below.
[source metro.co.uk, via videogamer.com]
Comments 23
Always thought the worst thing about OW was its focus on adding characters above other content. But, given the characters are Rivals' main appeal, this is probably a good move. This could be Super Smash levels of Internet hype.
It's a good pace for sure. Unfortunately though, this means we are still likely a year+ out from Cyclops & Gambit.
Anybody follow the big picture with this? Things like, are people dropping Overwatch, maybe even Fortnite, to play it? Is it bringing in enough money to keep going? I have no idea how this game is even making any money it never gets mentioned.
Seems like it’s doing well, I was just curious how well?🤷🏻♂️
@rjejr
I see the big streamers constantly playing it, according to steam charts there are 320k playing right now. Compare it to overwatch to at 16k and you can see they're doing really well right now. I believe they make most money off selling skins. If they keep pimping out new heroes that will keep people coming back, it's how Fortnite keeps their audience, always giving them new stuff to do. The biggest thing with Ow was the glacial pace that it released new characters.
@rjejr I think I remember reading something along the lines of $130 million, cant remember if that was 1 month or season 0. But the battle pass and cosmetics can keep it profitable if they are good and keep getting released.
The best part of this game is hearing my 17-year-old son and his friends talk about how all the female characters are "caked up". Even Squirrel Girl lol.
I have zero clue about marvel heroes but my friends and I have a better time with this over OverWatch 2.
Good to play in short burst but I hope dc brings a game like this in the future.
@rjejr they reported it’s first month earnings and it has already made over $135 million, with $27.3 million just from PlayStation users. The fact it made that much in its first month with such a limited selection of things to pay money for means it is doing extremely well. Estimates have it making over $1 billion by the end of the year
@Bri-Die hopefully once the X-men get added to the mcu they will do a big push for them. The reason the FF are the first heroes added is to hype up the upcoming movie and why Blade is next since his movie was supposed to come out this year
Am I the only one who can’t stand this stuff lol super hero’s n that 🥱
If I were a fan of this genre of game, this would probably be the one I would play. The characters look good to me, seeming to steer towards the comic book style. Overwatch has what I would describe as a Pixar / Disney CG animation kind of style. Now that I think of it, World of Warcraft is increasingly going in that direction too. Maybe that's what I didn't like about it on a recent re-sub.
@ATaco @Arckadius @PloverNutter Hey thanks you all for the intelligent replies. So, not Concorde then.
Joking aside those numbers seem pretty good to me. I read somewhere Infinity Nikki made a similar amount, $135 million, in its first month as well. I figured Nikki would do fine b/c Japan but people keep saying superhero’s are over and done, see Suicide Squad, but then this does fine.
I guess the moral of the story is over generalizations are over rated. 😁
Really starting to feel like free to play is here to stay, no matter what happened to Concorde and Suicide Squad. I wonder what Nintendo will do with MK9 after 2 years of Mario Kart 8 dlc? Not that either will be free but more games as a service. They could even go back to Smash launching with like a dozen characters.
I’m getting too old for this.😩
@PloverNutter Adding more X-Men with X-Men '97 themed suits just seems like a way to print money if I am being honest. I wonder if they will make exceptions to add 3-4 during specific seasons. Like a Defenders season adding 4 and an X-Men season adding more than 2. Seems unlikely given their statements, but this X-Fan can dream.
@rjejr what helps Rivals a lot is that because it is a Chinese made game it is allowed to be played on specific Chinese game servers. That is a huge player base that accounts for over $50 million of those first month sales. Even going beyond the money, the number of players is staggering. They just celebrated having 20 million registered players and having 2.5 million people playing concurrently which is nuts.
No wonder the Overwatch devs are salty. takes them like a whole year to add 1 new hero.
@AhmadSumadi
Thank you for teaching me new search terms…I mean, terminology!
@Bri-Die apparently there are already files for 3 Xmen characters to be added later but unfortunately none for Cyclops or Gambit for some reason despite being perfect for a hero shooter
@Contimaloris because all net ease has to do is use pre-existing marvel characters - they don’t have to create or think of anything
@nomither6 It takes that long to come up with 1 original character...
Even games like League of Legends can do 4 or 5 a year.
@Contimaloris you have a good point
@PloverNutter " Chinese made game "
Now this is the kind of info I'm looking for, basic important information. That would be NetEase right? I keep seeing their name pop up and I keep thinking their the Chinese Hoyoverse or Tencent but then I remember Hoyovesre and Tencent are also Chinse so... 😂
I never see anyone anywhere badmouth NetEase though. Very weird. I don't think I can keep up with it all anymore. As my kids, and now wife, would say, skill issue. 😩
@rjejr yeah NetEase is a Chinese game developer mostly known for cheap tie in mobile games. That is why when Rivals first leaked and that NetEase would be making it most people assumed it would be awful. Then the closed beta happened and blew everyone away. NetEase got a lot of goodwill from Rivals and how they have handled development along with communication with players.
@PloverNutter " communication with players "
That helps. People never like being kept in the dark, but with social media making it so easy to relay info people really don't like being kept in the dark.
Also possible people started not liking Tencent when they started buying up other companies and maybe Netease is just keeping to themselves. And nobody around here cares about mobile devs. 😁
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