Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team Disbanded After Critically Lauded Platformer Fails to Meet Expectations - Report
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team Disbanded After Critically Lauded Platformer Fails to Meet Expectations - Report - IGN
and executives expressed concerns that a sequel would cannibalize long-term sales of the first game
This is legit the most ridiculous take I've ever seen
Right? Like there are 48 Assasins Creed games, sequels are their bread and butter.
That sucks. The game itself was great and its Steam numbers are Concord-bad.
I'd put a lot more weight on "Ubisoft games suck because of all the MTX and games as a service stuff" if people hadn't ghosted the legitimately great zero-MTX traditional mid-sized game.
As a company pushes people away it gets harder to pull them back, so that doesnt take away from their complaints. Also, I'm not sure that the same crowd who plays other ubisoft titles is the crowd that's interested in a 2d platformer.
Well, it's the same crowd that plays a bunch of games that did better. The game is on the same platforms, Ubisoft or not. And all their GaaS games did much, much better on those same platforms, so yeah, it absolutely takes away from their complaints.
Outlaws may have been a bit of a disappointment and Mirage may have struggled, but Mirage had 5x the player count on its Steam relaunch than Lost Crown did. People want AssCreed and they're gonna get AssCreed forever.
The launch price is what killed it. In a genre dominated by AA games, games need to use AA pricetags.
There was also a little too much game. Instead of putting in every platforming challenge that they could think of for a given set of mechanics, it would have been paced much better if they just picked their two or three best. I'll bet it doesn't help that it requires the Ubisoft launcher on Steam either.
Could have said that of Ori and Hollow Knight and people seem to have showed up for those. I don't think this is any worse than they are, FWIW. In any case to even notice that kind of nuance you have to play it. If that was the conversation we're having they'd be making a sequel.
The fact that it initially launched on Epic certainly didn't help its Steam numbers, but it also did much worse than Outlaws and other Ubisoft exclusives there, so the "it's the MTX/GaaS" argument doesn't hold.
Xalavier Nelson Jr talked about this a few times over on Remap Radio.
Strange Scaffold (and many other indie studios) are literally doing what people are asking for. They are making "complete" games with no early access period and no DLC with shockingly high production values for the budget. And people are ignoring them until there is a massive sale AND still going full culture war over the stupidest of shit*. Which means it is increasingly difficult for them to secure any kind of funding even though they have an incredibly solid track record for both development and sales.
And... that is the sad reality. It has been true for decades at this point but it feels increasingly more true now. Games can't just release "done" because people will forget they exist by the time they are willing to buy them. Look at your steam wishlist and (please don't actually) tell me if you even remember what all of those are. Instead, people see that Caves of Qud is finally going to hit 1.0 or that Pathfinder 2 has a new DLC or that Fortnite has fucking Goku and that simultaneously reminds them that game exists AND has "new content" so that they can feel justified in being a "patient gamer".
I can't speak to this PoP. I know that it is a games media darling and is INCREDIBLY well done but I also tend to not want to give ubi money until yves is gone due to his role in enabling and protecting sexual misconduct which continues to this day. But it is a solid reminder of why so many major publishers refuse to do anything that is not a major franchise (and apparently Prince of Persia no longer is) or has high enough production values that it bypasses the "I'll wait for a sale" mindset.
So... Yeah, as consumers it is not our job or responsibility to protect the people trying to sell us shit. But, if you can afford it, consider buying fewer games overall but prioritizing newer ones that actively do things you think are awesome. From a selfish standpoint, you are more likely to actually play it rather than one of the five games you got for a dollar in a fanatical bundle. But it also REALLY helps those studios to be able to report solid first quarter (or even day one) sales and many games are already launching in the 20-30 USD range anyway.
Like, I don't know if "really well done metroidvania" is a particularly solid reason. But there is a reason all of us squad tactics sickos went crazy buying nu-xcom and the like back in the day. Because we had gone from such a lack of games that even frigging UFO: Afterlight was worth playing (it isn't. But Aftermath or whatever the first one in that series is is the best SG-1 game ever made) to suddenly having options. And, a decade later, we have enough options that... paradox fucking murdered HBS because they weren't pulling projected nu-xcom numbers.
*: Paraphrasing since it has been the better part of a year, but Xalavier was joking that he caught so much hell for basically parroting Swen's stance that Larian's BG3 was atypical and can't be reproduced. Yet people ignored all his VERY leftist takes on economics and social justice. Although, I assume that has shifted if he is still on twitter.
I don't know the guy, but all of that sounds reasonable to me.
BG3 can be replicated, if you have a massive dormant IP that is part of a furiously resurgent franchise and have several hundred million dollars to burn in a years-long development cycle by a studio that has already done pretty much the exact same thing without a license successfully twice.
I wouldn't model my business on aligning that set of circumstances, but I sure am glad Larian did.
To be clear, there's a bunch of other AAA stuff that is also doing quite well with pretty clean, finished games. But for midsize stuff like PoP... woof, yeah, it's so hard to break through.
And you're right, it's a miserable set of incentives that if you launch broken you kinda have a built-in marketing hit because suddenly you're doing live support and adding features. No Man's Sky was a fun one for that. Cyberpunk. But those games did great at launch, so they had the built-in base to keep growing while they fixed the game. PoP launched pretty clean, was small and nobody cared, so it's no wonder Ubi has decided it can make those super talented devs do stuff on the next massive AssCreed or whatever is left of Beyond Good and Evil 2 or The Division or whatever.
They are making “complete” games with no early access period and no DLC with shockingly high production values for the budget. And people are ignoring them until there is a massive sale
I can think of several other variables that may be necessary for success that aren't being tested in that statement. Like, is it a setting that resonates with people? Yes, I want more Max Payne, but not so much with vampires in it. Then when you find a game that gets acclaim and the audience is there for it, this is a good time to sequel that game, because now there's brand recognition on the game people like, and they'll be more willing to spend full price on a game where they're confident in what they're getting.
I just refuse to support Ubisoft. I don’t like their practices, or most of their games. I don’t feel I’m missing much by skipping whatever they make. Hopefully they go out of business and a better company can pick up their IPs and make good games, for a decent price, without crazy micro-transactions, 30 different special packs, and a required secondary launcher
Okay, but there was none of that here (except perhaps the launcher), and there was no suggestion in the results that anybody wants to encourage that. So that's definitely not the lesson being learned here.
Also, and I will keep repeating this forever, companies don't make games, people make games.
Also, also, good luck with that. Don't look now, but that's not how major companies going out of business and fire-selling their IPs tends to go.
Look, I'm not sure why it's Ubisoft's turn in the hot seat after EA and Activision, but none of that is a productive outlook or leads to a better outcome, as this one really good, really wholesome game bombing hard goes to show.
I wanted to play this, but not enough to interact with their launcher and Denuvo.
They released on steam in august, but yeah, by then people already forgot about it.
True, but even through Steam, you're still dealing with Ubi's launcher and Denuvo, so it's just adding another layer on top.
All (or at least the vast majority) of Ubisoft’s Steam releases require installing and using Ubisoft’s launcher.
The big reason I'm hearing in this thread is "Denuvo and I don't trust Ubisoft." However I doubt that is the reason the mainstream audience skipped over this game. Ubisoft franchises generally sell like hotcakes, and for the most part only nerds care about DRM (like the type of person who knows what a lemmy is).
It's hard to say why it didn't sell more units. Certainly it seems their internal expectations were sky high:
similarly to the biggest Metroidvania’s in the market, with millions of units sold in a relatively short space of time
The game is good, but metroidvania is not exactly an easy market; there's some juggernauts in that genre, and they came out with a completely new and unproven concept. Apparently it sold a million units or so still, to me that's not unimpressive.
On PC, it initially launched only on Epic afaik, which certainly doesn't help. And by the time they brought it to steam it was much too late.
What I don't really get is, why disband the team? They've proven they can produce quality stuff. Just hand them some other promising projects? I suppose that's too much of a risk for a publisher like Ubisoft.
Prince of Persia is such a IP almost no one cares about and most people know that it has something to do with AC in some way.
How the mighty have fallen eh? Prince of Persia was a big franchise once upon a time. Like, the Sands of time trilogy was AAA tier.
Didn't even know this existed, sounded like another case of "We made a game and didn't do any marketing for it, made absolutely no effort to let anyone know this even existed. I guess this means this genre and IP are worthless."
I love 2D platformers. I had no idea this game was anything like that. Absolutely no one has talked about it. All I've seen is the character with the logo, and it just looks like a bad knockoff of the old sequels, so...
Maybe they should have advertised it.
OK but did it really flop or where they expecting it to sell a morbillion units weekly?
OK but did it really flop or where they expecting it to sell a morbillion units weekly?
Sources say that Ubisoft was expecting The Lost Crown to sell similarly to the biggest Metroidvania’s in the market, with millions of units sold in a relatively short space of time. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has sold approximately one million units at the time of writing.
I'm assuming Ubisoft thought people would blindly cash in on a a legacy franchise. I'm sure the game was fine, but nothing mindblowing. Just didn't make enough money for the cash money execs.
It's actually a really good game, though of course it has some problems. The real issue is the fact that most people weren't even aware that it existed.
I’d put it almost on par with Hollow Knight. One of the best modern Metroidvanias I’ve played.
I passed on this one because I always feel like there's a real chance I'll get screwed one way or another by Ubisoft so I just avoid them outright.
"why are people not buying our games? Please only give answers where we are not at fault and admit no wrongdoing"
That's a shame to hear, I recently played this game and it's one of the best Metroidvanias I've ever played.
Perhaps the reason is more simple. When did we have a non-indie platformer title well received by the mass? I don't think people want a combo of "platformer" and "AAA" (hence the price).
I would consider this game, but I’m not installing another launcher. I used to play Far Cry 3 & 4, but I haven’t touched them since the launcher became a part of it.
Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme...
This game is technically the same price of other metroidvanias like Bloodstained, in the US maybe, because here in Brazil this game is almost the same price of a regular AAA, they didn't localize the price at all, so I wouldn't buy it until it gets a deep discount since I don't buy any overpriced AAA on release anymore either.
The price here is so high that even the 40% steam debut was still too much for it, I can buy 3 Bloodstaineds without any discount for the price of 1 Lost Crown.
This is the kind of shit that makes you wish for the imminent Ubisoft debacle to happen sooner rather than later.
IGN though. Would consider theonion more credible news source.
Fuck you, Ubi. Apart from all your shitty practices, it's a 15-hour game that's 40€ with a 50€ complete edition and cosmetics bullshit. That shit won't fly anymore. I might get it in two years when it's 10€, but only if your kill your launcher as a requirement.
edit: also, it came out a month ago. Learn to suck on the long tail of sales before you sacrifice your employees to Chtulhu, they'll just make their own vaguely middle eastern platformers in Unity or UE and make more money than your shitty company.
*on steam
What is your problem with the price related to the length of the game?
I paid $8 for Titanfall 2. Worth every penny since I only play campaign (~6-8 hours). I wouldn't have bought it for more than $10.