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

Game deserves way more buys, one of the best games this year for me and I think it will make my top 10. Everything is so smooth and once you get going and get the double jump/air dash, the movement just becomes so crisp. I wish it was a better experience on the Switch personally speaking from a technicality standpoint but that might be more of a knock on the Switch than anything else. I have yet to play the DLC but I know this game didn't sell well sadly. Deserved a far better fate.

Ubisoft has nothing going for it as a company for me with this news now. PoP: Sands of Time remake will be in 2-3 years if we're lucky but how good will that be and what will need to be the price point for that to break even if not sell well for Ubisoft to determine that it was a hit?
 
KXVXII9X said:
ouch.... This put a damper on my day. Ubisoft Montpellier was the best part of Ubisoft... Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is one of the most underrated games I can think of. Excellent Metroidvania with a great style and great combat and boss battles. They were also behind the Rayman games and Valiant Heart, which were also excellent. First Japan Studio, then TangoWorks, then Annapurna, and now this... All the studios/publishers who push out creative games seem to be going under.

Gamers will continue to say there aren't creative games or Ubisoft makes the same kind of slop but constantly trash on games like PoP: The Lost Crown and Mario and Rabbids. No one buys these games. I am already seeing so many odd comments here like how it shouldn't be priced at $50. The game was constantly on sale and generous with free updates and such. It was super polished and had a ton of content. People just kept making the same Prince of Wakanda jokes and ripping on the art style. I'm not even going to start on the people going on about "woke." You kind of people have sucked the joy out of gaming.
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Agreed 100%

I never understood why The Lost Crown got a "Woke" designation, is it because the main character? The game has fuck all to do with any of that stuff and it's a pretty interesting story and cool cast of characters. When games like this don't sell well or do better, you begin to get more uncreative, uninspired slop thrown at us and then wonder where is all the creativity gone.

Just frustrating all around. Hope the people of Ubisoft Montpellier can pick themselves up from this and find work elsewhere, seriously talented people and I appreciate them trying to tackle genres like Platformers, Metroidvania etc. and doing a great job with them.
 
Dane said:
Because Vanillaware built a great reputation over the years with the public, imagine that a good chunk of these sales came from people who bought their previous games, and they could have easily sold even more with a PC release.

Ubisoft on the other hand decided to take a slow path to pariah after Watch Dogs downgrade, by today they aren't even well seen by casuals, having a niche game whose majority of customers despise Ubisoft and pricing it at 50 bucks were stacking against The Lost Crown.
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But Ubisoft Montpellier always had a good reputation. They also made both Rayman games and Valiant Hearts. And it had Gareth Chocker as one of the composers...
 
Sorry but that is not the prince of Persia, he is imposter with modern day hipster haircut and hiphop music, sorry but this isn't pop.

Give me the actual prince and charge no more than $40 and I would of bought it day 1. I love metroidvania's but the main character and initial trailer threw me off, then came that price point.
 
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Metroidvania is one of my favorite genres the past few years. I'd be so happy to spend $50 on a big budget release. This game was just not it. I didn't like anything about it. Art style was eye burning bad and the combat was not tactile and precise like you'd expect in Hollow Knight, Castlevania or anything else in the genre. It's "press X to do backflips and ariels and shit with a sword".

The game seemed well made if you liked the aesthetic and gameplay choices. I'll say that.
 
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The OG Sands of Time and Two Thrones are both on sale on steam. $2 each. No achievements on either one though, unfortunately. I guess they were put up on steam before achievements became a thing?
 
soap-opera-india.gif
 
Raziel said:


What could've gone wrong?
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Well, considering the many discussions around modern games this was actually the kind of game lot of old school gamers asked for. But apperently they skipped it.
The marketing was also bad, but did it really fail because of it?
 
PatientGamer said:
Agreed. Though no marketing could've saved it.

Ubisoft as a company is so mismanaged, they'd somehow manage to fuck up GTAVI if they were running it.
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Well to quote Winjer:
winjer said:
Ubisoft's reputation is so bad, that even when they release a good game, people ignore it, because they expect it to be crap.

It also didn't help that it was released on Steam, more than half a year later.
And to make things even worse, it has denuvo and the Ubisoft app. I don't want to deal with this crap, if I buying a game on Steam.
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Marketing probably would not have saved PoP, but it would've done much better if Ubisoft was not a stupid company.

Problem is... Ubisoft is a stupid company.
 
I don't give a fuck about PoP, but the fact that this team is getting shut down after making the absolute GOAT Rayman games is a travesty.
 
KXVXII9X said:
First Japan Studio, then TangoWorks, then Annapurna, and now this... All the studios/publishers who push out creative games seem to be going under.
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Eh, probably for the best, most mismanaged studio of all time ever since it was established in 2005. The fact that they couldn't manage to create a barebones Ape Escape sequel for PS3 (which was indeed in the works) was the first red flag.
 
nial said:
Eh, probably for the best, most mismanaged studio of all time ever since it was established in 2005. The fact that they couldn't manage to create a barebones Ape Escape sequel for PS3 (which was indeed in the works) was the first red flag.
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The good part is I am seeing more independent projects done by former Japan Studio staff. I hope they are more successful. Thankfully Asobi is afloat for now.
 
KXVXII9X said:
The good part is I am seeing more independent projects done by former Japan Studio staff. I hope they are more successful. Thankfully Asobi is afloat for now.
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Team Asobi was a good reorganizing because it's focusing on a clear, single vision, which is what Japan Studio sadly lacked for the most part (especially once Ueda left SCEI in 2011).
You can see that Toyama was building up Gravity Rush to be THAT thing, but the problem is that the games were far too niche, as opposed to something like Astro Bot that has a much wider reach.
Some people may look at this and get sad to see Gravity Rush being abandoned in favor of Astro Bot (which is a reasonable sentiment), but I personally thought of things like Ape Escape being abandoned in favor of Gravity Rush back in the day as well.
 
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One of the best games released this year and one of the best Metroidvanias ever made, shame, how many of you bought it though? Yeah, that's what I thought.
 
Please just give us Prince of Persia 4. Stop releasing stuff that doesn't have to do with the main series.
 
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Spukc said:
that's insane no wonder it failed
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The cost they spend at Ubi is insane IMO. I usually will watch credits when I finish a game, and I swear the last UBI game I completed....Far Cry 6 maybe had like 45-50 minutes of credits. They are beyond the definition of bloat and deserve all the firings that will cut across that company. I feel bad for people who worked on this that are talented, but good people end up in new studios that will make something better while the toxic purple haired people will spend time on twitter bitching they got fired. It'll all work out in the end for gamers
 
It was a good game, but charging $50 for a Metroidvania was just like sending it to die

You aren't Nintendo, Ubi
 
I'm sorry to read that people really liked the game, but Ubisoft disbands the developer team.

I've played through OG Karateka (multiple times) and then OG Prince Of Persia (same creator, again using rotoscope for animations, but far improved upon), and at the time they were awesome looking and addictive to play -- but really hard to master for me anyway. Never played the sequel to the OG PoP.

I did play through Sands of Time, since again at the time I thought it had really good visuals and very fun gameplay (really liked the time reversing mechanic, kinda hated a few of the platform jumping segments with bad sense of perspective in 3d).

I then bought all the sequels and also the one that... wasn't, but I barely played any of them. Maybe someday (I tell myself).

I also like games of the "Metroidvania" genre, but usually there has to be something else there, visually (certainly) or mechanically (something really feeling innovative/fresh/cool) to hook me in.

Then, comes this. This doesn't feel like it's addressed to me (but does feel that it wants my purchase). Maybe to a younger audience (?). The trailer was meh, I didn't like the art style, gfx, or the look they went for with the protagonist and there was nothing special for me (at least from what was shown) in the gameplay or the mechanics. (I didn't like the choice of music for the trailer either, but presumably it's far from the actual game soundtrack).

The pricing and the timed Ubisoft store exclusivity did not do it any favors either.

I don't mind the return to 2d-ish gameplay, the side-scroller, the platforming, or the change of the protagonist (being someone else other than the OG Stranger/"Prince"). But looking at gameplay it looks like an odd mix of GFX mess with a camera being pulled a bit more back than I'd like. The controls *seem* tight at least -- I wish I had found the time to play the demo, maybe I'd have a more informed view on it.

Given the backlog (in general and of PoP titles specifically) I would have bought this only in support of *seeing* something that liked and wanted more of in the future... But, unfortunately, as I said, I didn't find anything like that.
 
AA games don't sell, so what's new. Great game but ur gonna have a hard time selling a game does not even have the prince as main the protagonist 😂.
 
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onnextflix5 said:
AA games don't sell, so what's new. Great game but ur gonna have a hard time selling a game does not even have the prince as main the protagonist 😂.
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Good AA game does sell, look at trine series, they just release trine 5 last year, it's 5th game of the series, if it doesn't sell they should go bankrupt long time ago
 
Curious as to what their sales expectations actually were. The game is AUD$60.00, which is the same price as Helldivers 2, and it visually looks like an indie game.
 
It must be so disheartening to work in the gaming industry nowadays, even if I had the talent and time I don't think I could handle the job insecurity.
 
Would be interesting to know what their sales expectations are. Randomly googling popular side scrolling rogue or metroidvanias, over many years of selling and bargain binning, here's some sales:

Dead Cells 10M
Hollow Knight 3M
Metroid Dread 3M
Bloodstained 2M
Blasphemous 2.5M

Lost Crown sold 300,000 copies out of the gate, but cant find info what total sales there's been YTD.
 
Fbh said:
It's a game that tried to appeal to everyone and in turn ended up appealing to no one.
They thought the fact it's POP would attract older fans and the "modern" visual design and style would appeal to younger people.

In the end though zoomers didn't show up because they don't care about metroidvanias or PoP
And older fans didn't show up because they were put off by the visual design and style.
And the pricing probably didn't help with either group.



We can beat around the bush but it's less about the fact that the character doesn't have the title of prince and more about the fact the character looks like a Fortnite coded Killmonger instead of what you'd expect from Prince Of Persia.
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That's how it is. In recent years, Ubisoft's artistic direction has been a disaster, even though it used to be one of their strongest assets in the industry. They've ruined many IPs, ignoring their core audience, by following this trend of featuring teenage protagonists, with lots of color and over-the-top craziness (Watch Dogs, Rainbow Six, Far Cry, The Division, etc.). And let's not forget the elephant in the room: the strong push for "forced" diversity in some IPs. A prime example is Prince of Persia, where they replaced the classic protagonist with a kid who looks more like he's from Boston or New York. All he needed was a smartphone to use his abilities... Clearly, this is heavily influenced by Fortnite.

It would be great if someone started a thread comparing Ubisoft's artistic evolution over the past 10 years. It would be both interesting and sad to see.
 
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Geez, I feel like Western Dev Talent is really hurting nowadays. Apparently a great game too, still need to play. Lay offs everywhere
 
Fbh said:
It's a game that tried to appeal to everyone and in turn ended up appealing to no one.
They thought the fact it's POP would attract older fans and the "modern" visual design and style would appeal to younger people.

In the end though zoomers didn't show up because they don't care about metroidvanias or PoP
And older fans didn't show up because they were put off by the visual design and style.
And the pricing probably didn't help with either group.



We can beat around the bush but it's less about the fact that the character doesn't have the title of prince and more about the fact the character looks like a Fortnite coded Killmonger instead of what you'd expect from Prince Of Persia.
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This post 100% nails it.

I also skipped because of that lame ass main character design.
 
jcorb said:
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"?
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Unless you have a passionate millionaire funding your project you need a publisher. And all of the big players will refuse that pitch, especially if it's something like The Lost Crown that's supposed to be a bigger budget 2D game without aggressive plans for monetization.

Games are unfortunately expensive to make. Even a group of 20-30 people will need a ton of money to spend 3 years developing a medium sized game. So you usually have to pick between making a proper indie as a very small group or working for a big studio on another soulless sequel.
 
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