Ubisoft has disbanded the team behind the recently-released platformer Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, in accordance with a good French journalist. The alleged cause for disbanding the team is a straightforward one. The sport didn’t meet gross sales expectations and Ubisoft “needed more hands to help on other projects that had a better sales potential.” This is in accordance with a translation revealed on Reset Era.
“Most of the team members who worked on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have shifted to other projects that will benefit from their expertise,” Abdelhak Elguess, a senior producer on the sport, instructed Eurogamer.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown bought round 300,000 copies throughout its first few weeks of availability, totaling $15 million in income, as indicated by a report by Insider Gaming. These gross sales figures allegedly “sealed the fate” of the sport and its dev team. Ubisoft staffers reportedly pushed increased ups for a sequel, or extra DLC, however have been allegedly denied.
Oddly, the firm’s executives reportedly refused to greenlight a sequel on the grounds that it could cannibalize gross sales of the unique. I’m unsure that’s how sequels work, particularly once they come out years after the first sport, however no matter.
This is unhappy for a quantity of causes. First of all, the sport was nice. The Metacritic mixture overview rating sits at 86, whereas person opinions hover at round 8.5 out of ten. I performed it and located it to be a incredible Metroidvania that might simply sit subsequent to some of the classics of the style, like Hollow Knight and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
It’s additionally a bummer as a result of avid gamers consistently complain that Ubisoft doesn’t attempt something new, as a substitute counting on iterative enhancements of its core franchises or making use of tried-and-true gameplay mechanics to pre-existing IPs. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a retro-style throwback, certain, nevertheless it’s not one other lifeless open world map full of fetch quests and stealth missions.
By all accounts, it additionally appears to be like to have been a constructive improvement expertise. The French journalist who broke this story, Gautoz, stated he heard from a number of staff that it was the finest sport manufacturing expertise of their lives. It was seen as a “beacon of hope” for “people that were burnt out by” the limitless improvement cycle of Beyond Good and Evil 2.
Why did it underperform? There’s no arduous knowledge, however this was a 2D sidescroller that value a whopping $60. That could possibly be one cause. Only Nintendo can get away with charging full worth for retro-style titles.
It’s additionally price noting that this was only one of two sidescrolling Prince of Persia video games to launch this 12 months, which might have injected some confusion into the market. Evil Empire, the team behind Dead Cells, additionally soft-launched The Rogue Prince of Persia again in May as an early entry title. This is a roguelite spin on the conventional franchise video games.
