Nintendo of Hong Kong recently announced that Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 will release with support for the Chinese language. This represents the first time that a game in the series will support the language at launch.
When the first two Marvel Ultimate Alliance games launched over a decade ago, they did so without Chinese language support. The Chinese market back then wasn’t seen as big as it is now after all. Marvel and Activision were likely targeting a western audience for those initial releases.
Times have changed however. China now represents one of the biggest markets not just for video games, but for movies as well. Marvel’s films now tend to do will in China. For example, the recent Avengers: Endgame broke box office records there. As such, it seems only natural that Marvel, Nintendo, and Team Ninja would want to take advantage of the former’s success in the region.
The Chinese government recently gave Nintendo and its partner Tencent the go ahead to release the Switch in the country. With this in mind, it seems that Nintendo is looking to solidify its launch lineup in the country with a game featuring a popular IP.
In addition to this, this move also takes advantage of the large Chinese speaking population in the region outside of China. Scores of mainland Chinese are have already moved to neighboring territories like the Hong Kong and Philippines for work. Giving them a game they can understand, let alone take back home to China, makes a lot of sense.
Now, Nintendo just needs to make sure Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 gets approved by the Chinese government. Sadly, the recent release of new approval guidelines has resulted in a long backlog of games for approval. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 might not make its July 19 release date in China if it gets caught up in that.
