Nintendo and Marvel discuss why the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise is returning, and how their collab happened

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order was announced a few months back, and it's a Switch-exclusive. Not only that, but Nintendo is directly involved in development alongside Marvel Games and Team Ninja. How in the world did all of this come about? Marvel Games VP and executive producer Mike Jones, as well as Nintendo's Bill Trinen explained the situation to Game Informer.

“We have a lot of reverence from the franchise. We knew it was really important to a lot of people. But we also knew that after 10 years of not having another installment, it wasn’t going to be enough to just make a sequel. That’s expected, and we needed something unexpected. So, for the last few years, we were on the lookout for what that might be. And then one day we found our answer. Once we understood what Nintendo had in store for the next generation of gaming, by the end of the meeting we were on our feet with excitement, going: ‘This is it! This is the next step for Ultimate Alliance.'” - Mike Jones

“There was a mutual feeling that the series itself was one we hadn’t seen in a long time, and that we wanted to see it come back. From a multiplayer perspective, it’s the ability to just set it up and play it anywhere. From a Marvel content perspective, that feels like the perfect fit for the Switch platform because of the multiplayer focus, and because of the versatility of the platform.” - Bill Trinen