Marvel distances itself from publishing rumours

With the likes of Disney, Warner and Paramount making increasingly bold strides into the games space, many had pegged Marvel as the next entertainment giant to follow suit – but the famed comic publisher has now distanced itself from the talk.

There are different types of games we could do, like MMOs casual games, and console games,” Marvel’s worldwide consumer products president Simon Phillips told Variety.

But we just started to finance own movies and our own animation. We want to see how all of that goes before we start to go down the route other studios are on of financing a wide range of different types of video games.”

The news comes despite a recent big-money deal that saw the studio reacquire the rights to make movies on a number of its comic franchises, and will surely be welcomed by current publishers of Marvel games THQ and Activision Blizzard.

And furthering its apparent commitment to continue licensing out its properties to third party game outfits, Marvel has now signed a ten-year deal with new online studio Gazillion Entertainment.

The 300-people strong studio will, according to VentureBeat, release its first Marvel game in 2010 – a kid-orientated MMO based on Super Hero Squad. Gazillion has the rights to make online games based on any of Marvel’s superheroes.