Avalanche Studios co-founder reveals canceled Iron Man game that "would've broken" the studio

gamedeveloper.com:

"I was a mess by the end. Shortening development time, increasing budget. We would have had to hire 70-80 people to the team that I would have had responsibility to find a new project for. But development time was shortened down so much that it was impossible. It would have broken the studio completely." 

- Christofer Sundberg, Avalanche Studios co-founder

Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios was approached by Disney in 2012 to work on a solo game for Iron Man, revealed co-founder Christofer Sundberg. 

Speaking to MinnMax's Ben Hanson, Sundberg, who left Avalanche in 2020 to form Liquid Swords, discussed how the project fell apart due to "company politics." 

While Iron Man's been a key figure in Marvel since his original film in 2008, he's mostly shared the video game space with other Avengers. After the the two tie-in video games from Sega in 2008 and 2010, there wouldn't be another Iron Man-themed game until the 2020 PlayStation VR game.

One of the reasons for the game's cancellation, stated Sundberg, was its development period. The game wasn't meant to coincide with the release of Iron Man 3, but Avalanche was asked to make it with in a short time, which wouldn't have been at all feasible. 

"It would've broken the studio completely if we had agreed to that," admitted Sundberg. "We would have had to hire 70-80 people to the team that I would have had responsibility to find a new project for."

Sundberg didn't disclose much about the Iron Man game, but he did reveal that the company's focus would've been on melee combat over flight. He described as similar to the melee combat in Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham titles, saying that players would've been able to use Iron Man's fists and and repulsor blasts, then take off into the