Sega won't be publishing any more video games featuring characters from the Marvel Comics stable any time soon, if ever again. Marvel's vice president of games production, TQ Jefferson, while light on specifics, confirmed the news in a recent interview.

"There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by Sega," he said.

"In my opinion, the biggest afflictions affecting movie-licensed games is the amount of development time and a strict adherence to retelling the story of the film in the form of a game," Jefferson told The Hollywood Reporter. Development cycles for movie tie-ins can be comparatively short, and can't simply retell the same story present in the film on which it's based. "Then you would have a two-hour experience with a bunch of thugs and one boss fight," Jefferson explained.

Anyone who has played any Sega-published Marvel games lately isn't likely to be too shocked. Quite the contrary; they might even be a bit relieved. As pointed out by Eurogamer, one only need take a look at the Metacritic ratings for Sega-published Marvel games to get a clear picture of the problem.

The percentage of positive reviews for each game in question are as follows: Iron Man (45), Iron Man 2 (41), The Incredible Hulk (55), Captain America: Super Soldier (60), and Thor: God of Thunder (38).

Although Jefferson didn't delve into the specifics of why Sega will no longer be publishing these series, the review scores speak for themselves. Whatever magic formula Sega was trying to employ for its Marvel games (which were all movie tie-ins, as well) was actually a recipe for mediocrity at best, and disaster at worst.