Years ago, Activision published and developed a number of classic Marvel games, which have since disappeared from the digital market due to expiring licenses. Two of the biggest notable examples, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Deadpool, could be poised for a comeback soon as Microsoft is reportedly in talks with Marvel.
According to XboxEra, Xbox is “trying to work through” license talks with Marvel for some older Activision-published Marvel titles. Specifically, Microsoft wants to bring back Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Deadpool, both of which had short-lived releases on last-gen consoles, like the Xbox One and PS4. While the first two Marvel Ultimate Alliance action-RPGs were published by Activision, Nintendo surprisingly obtained the exclusivity rights for the most recent game in the series, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, which is only available on Nintendo Switch.
As both Deadpool and Marvel Ultimate Alliance both saw remasters on Xbox One, PS4 and PC, these newer versions of the games were delisted from stores within two years of release.
While Marvel does have some close ties to Sony at this stage thanks to the success of the PlayStation-exclusive Spider-Man games, Xbox has also been working on getting into the comic hero business, having forged a deal to make an exclusive game for Xbox and PC based on Blade.
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KitGuru Says: I was searching for the Deadpool game on PC recently, but as it turns out, I did not add it to my Steam library back when it was available. However, someone has added it to the Internet Archive for preservation, so the game is still quite readily available, albeit not through any official storefront. If Microsoft reobtains the license, I'd expect that download to disappear.