• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Ubisoft has disbanded the team behind Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. Game did not reach expectations and sequel was refused.

Kruza

Member
This is unfortunate news to me because I personally like Prince of Persia The Lost Crown very much. Has some absolutely amazing and thoughtful puzzles, platforming action in this game is varied and really good, and the combat system is exceptional.
 

LectureMaster

Gold Member
Fucking Christ, it is the only great Ubi were able to make in recent years. And it's a fucking 40 dollars game, what's your insane expectations for revenue? Did you spend 400 million make the game?

Ubi is beyond salvation.
 
This is why sales are important. People don't buy a product, you're not going to see more of that product.

People blaming marketing or management have no idea what they're talking about. They don't even know what they're blaming them for.

Something that people should start to understand with critical thinking is that you can do everything right and still not get the results you wanted.

The price of the game is largely based on the budget of the game and the level of ROI the company is looking to get back from a game. That ROI covers the general risk pool of your portfolio. When a game sells significantly less than your expectations, the sensible thing to do is remove it from the risk pool which narrows risk on other titles.
 

PeteBull

Member
The future for Ubisoft is bleak. They used to be so good too.

- Rayman Legends / Origins
- Splinter Cell
- The Division
- Ass Creed 2 trilogy

Sad what they are now.
Making games is very competetive market, when ur top priority isnt game's highest quality stuff happens, which is followed by other stuff, which in the end results in lay offs/studio clousure :p
 

Sleepwalker

Member
- Uninteresting main character
- bad trailer
- old as shit graphics
- high price point

No shit it failed. PoP fans have been waiting for a long time and first you show a trailer for the worst remake ever (pop sands of time) and then you release a new game, except its AA and you don't even play as the prince.
 

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
Before some of you celebrate, this isn’t good news guys.

That team was one of the Rayman teams.
Rayman is basically dead anyways with his creator gone. They just further doomed themselves by flushing away more money due to bad character designs with this. It was a predictable but maybe avoidable outcome had they made it look more appealing and marketable.

“they're doing a 'Legend of Zelda' where the protagonist is going to save the person who's name is on the title.”

Well I guess that didn’t work out for them after all now did it?
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
I wonder what their expectations were, it was a $50 game in a genre people are conditioned to pay $20, $30 for max. Not to say it wasn't worth the price, it was great, but I don't know what they eexpected. Also playing as the Black Panther guy was weird.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
That game was decent, and could have been more of a success if Ubisoft upper management didn't fuck it up. It's a shame how the devs have to pay the price for their bosses' mistakes.
 

jcorb

Member
Really seems like Ubisoft has some serious management problems. Their dev teams are clearly competent, but without seeing the sales numbers, it seems like the industry has a nasty problem across the board of setting outlandish sale projections, and then treating their games as failures when they don't meet those ridiculous numbers.

At the very least, it doesn't sound like anyone necessarily lost their job, but they've merely been allocated to other teams.

I can't help but wonder, for all the devs who are clearly passionate about making games, what's really stopping them from banding together and just saying "actually, fuck you, we ARE going to make the games we want to make"?
 
PS3 quality graphics didnt help. If you are going to make a 2D game in 2023, and charge $50 for it, it cant look worse than most indie games.

Also, try and make 2D games more interesting. there is a reason why they died out. People found more freedom in 3D games. You can still make one but it has to be industry leading with new innovative mechanics and gameplay not possible in 3D games. Making a simple 2d sidescroller with awful graphics is not going to sell. especially at $50.

Put in more effort next time.
Game is awesome though and it looks just fine.
 

BlackTron

Member
Can't believe they charged 50 bucks for a metroidvania with mobile game graphics, and expected it to sell well.
That game was decent, and could have been more of a success if Ubisoft upper management didn't fuck it up. It's a shame how the devs have to pay the price for their bosses' mistakes.

Hey someone has to take all the blame so the people who screwed up can go on to the the same thing to someone else over and over.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
PS3 quality graphics didnt help. If you are going to make a 2D game in 2023, and charge $50 for it, it cant look worse than most indie games.

Also, try and make 2D games more interesting. there is a reason why they died out. People found more freedom in 3D games. You can still make one but it has to be industry leading with new innovative mechanics and gameplay not possible in 3D games. Making a simple 2d sidescroller with awful graphics is not going to sell. especially at $50.

Put in more effort next time.
Lost Crown's graphics were actually amazing though.
 

reektann

Member
Sad times. Definitely launched too expensive - I waited for it to be £24.99 then got it. Really awesome metroidvania with some of the best feeling platforming out there. Picked up the dlc too the other day! Also I really appreciate that I could play it on switch which I borrowed from a friend then I chose to switch to Xbox so I uploaded my save to the Ubisoft cloud thing then downloaded it on the Xbox and it worked flawlessly. More games need to allow this.
 
Last edited:

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
What a fucking shame, it is an amazing game. One of the best 2D Metroid-vania's in a long time.
 

iorek21

Member
If there's one publisher that should be bought in order to be saved, it's Ubisoft.

Guillemot will destroy Ubisoft if things keep like this.
 

//DEVIL//

Member
Incredible game, nearly 100%ed it and then can jump on the DLC. Sad it didn't sell well.



What does any of this have to do with Lost Crown?
Good game with very low sales because of the company’s stance and their push to go woke full force in all their games. Leading to shitty sales of a game that doesn’t deserve this low number.

Not to mention they charging full price for this kind of game which shouldn’t be more than 40$ ?

Where to start really ? Shitty company is a shitty company.
 
Visually it’s just not appealing. The Fortnite style characters puts up warning flags, but even in gameplay games like Trine, Inside or Little Nightmares blow this thing away visually.

Then again Metroid Dread also looks mediocre and that sold just fine so I dunno.
 
Last edited:

Woopah

Member
Good game with very low sales because of the company’s stance and their push to go woke full force in all their games. Leading to shitty sales of a game that doesn’t deserve this low number.

Not to mention they charging full price for this kind of game which shouldn’t be more than 40$ ?

Where to start really ? Shitty company is a shitty company.
I don't remember there being any LGBT+ characters or "woke" things in the game, so don't see that having a major impact.
 
I tried to buy the game when it came out but discovered after thinking I must be missing something that it wasn’t available on Steam. At that point I threw my hands up in the air, and was like “alright well clearly they don’t want my money”, figured I’d get it some day. I think several months later it eventually went to Steam, but at the moment I have so many games it’ll be awhile before I get to it.

Oh well!
 
Good game with very low sales because of the company’s stance and their push to go woke full force in all their games. Leading to shitty sales of a game that doesn’t deserve this low number.

Not to mention they charging full price for this kind of game which shouldn’t be more than 40$ ?

Where to start really ? Shitty company is a shitty company.
Are you sure you’re in the right thread? Ubisoft is woke? Yikes, I’ve heard the opposite.
 
Idiotic management.


They made a great game. If didn't sell well that's marketing/upper management's fault, not the dev team.
They did not get fired. They got put on games with better chances on the market. The sequel would have also flopped leading to another Tango situation. The management is doing their job and saving the devs from themselves.
 

Gambit2483

Member
Ubisoft's fate was sealed the moment they were no longer trend setters but instead trend chasers.

So much is wrong and broken inside this company I can't see them recovering from this.
 
Even though I never played it but have seen this franchise throughout the years since childhood. I still feel bad for the ones that do like it. Just like Vision of Mana another game I didn't play but could tell it looked good. Both Vision of Mana and Prince of Persia didn't deserve to be flops the same way that Concord and Dustborn deserved it.
 

Majormaxxx

Member
Unfortunate news. Reminds me of how the wonderful Tomb Raider 2013 sold "only" 3 million copies and square Enix were not happy...
 
Prince of Persia was actually one of my first games I ever played. And also the last one. I dont know...never really liked platform games. 🤷‍♂️

Prince_of_Persia_1_-_MS-DOS_-_Gameplay.gif

Yea I had this on pc it was so hard.
 

Wonko_C

Member
PS3 quality graphics didnt help. If you are going to make a 2D game in 2023, and charge $50 for it, it cant look worse than most indie games.

Also, try and make 2D games more interesting. there is a reason why they died out. People found more freedom in 3D games. You can still make one but it has to be industry leading with new innovative mechanics and gameplay not possible in 3D games. Making a simple 2d sidescroller with awful graphics is not going to sell. especially at $50.

Put in more effort next time.
Does this game somehow look worse than Nintendo's best selling Metroid game in the series? (Metroid Dread). Because that game is $60.
 
Unfortunate news. Reminds me of how the wonderful Tomb Raider 2013 sold "only" 3 million copies and square Enix were not happy...
The studio is based in Canada, not in some third world country. Sq Ex lost money hand over fist on these Canadian studios. No shit they were not happy with just 3 million sales.
 

Rentahamster

Rodent Whores
This is why sales are important. People don't buy a product, you're not going to see more of that product.

People blaming marketing or management have no idea what they're talking about. They don't even know what they're blaming them for.

Was it not management who decided to not launch the game on Steam until August, and even then require a Ubisoft account to play the game?
 

Thabass

Member
I have a running theory that the game failed to live up to expectations because they released this way before they released the Sands of Time Remake/Master. I know its a game I wanted to go back and play and still do intend on playing it, but I was also told that Sands of Time was going to be coming soon and soon they pivoted to this. It's such a strange move.
 
Does this game somehow look worse than Nintendo's best selling Metroid game in the series? (Metroid Dread). Because that game is $60.
No company can sell more than 5 million copies of shitty ass content starved 60$ games like Mario Party and Mario Tennis, but Nintendo did. No company on the market can follow Nintendo's pricing model. For the record, I did not buy Dread nor did I buy this game. I am not paying more than 10 pounds for 2D Metroidvanias as I am not a big fan of the genre. I already have the best ones like Deadcells, Hollow Knight and Ori in my library and I did not spend more than 10 pound for any of them.
 
Last edited:
Was it not management who decided to not launch the game on Steam until August, and even then require a Ubisoft account to play the game?

And you think this can be tied to the game not performing to expectations?

What sales did they lose because of these things and what financial remuneration did they offset by doing them?

The reality is games like this don't sell well on Steam and certainly not at 50 dollars.
 

PeteBull

Member
Great game, Ubisoft are idiots. Burn you fucks.
They likely had overbudgeted it, games like that usually dont sell more than 200-300k copies, who knows what ubi expected it to sell, maybe 500k+ at full price?
With big budget like with all western studios, u can expect it had to end nasty :p
Example of AA game(50usd launch price) with proper budget is fairy recent Robocop:Rogue City, and guess what, straight from its wiki:
Rogue City exceeded Nacon's expectations and was the publisher's biggest launch, with the game reaching 435,000 players in its first two weeks since release.[39]
 
And you think this can be tied to the game not performing to expectations?

What sales did they lose because of these things and what financial remuneration did they offset by doing them?

The reality is games like this don't sell well on Steam and certainly not at 50 dollars.
Most PCMR gamers harbor the delusion that Steam release will save games, while extolling the virtues of cheap key sites and deep sales as a major benefit over consoles. They will never accept the fact for some games Steam simultaneous release is of zero benefit.
 
Top Bottom