Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team Disbanded After Critically Lauded Platformer Fails to Meet Expectations

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 2 points 38 minutes ago

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.

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 3 points 52 minutes ago

OK but did it really flop or where they expecting it to sell a morbillion units weekly?

[-] lockhart@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 hours ago

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

[-] Gerudo@lemm.ee 8 points 2 hours ago

Right? Like there are 48 Assasins Creed games, sequels are their bread and butter.

[-] bread@feddit.nl 22 points 3 hours ago

I wanted to play this, but not enough to interact with their launcher and Denuvo.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 2 points 50 minutes ago

They released on steam in august, but yeah, by then people already forgot about it.

[-] kemsat@lemmy.world 6 points 2 hours ago

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.

[-] zecg@lemmy.world 50 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

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.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 5 points 49 minutes ago

also, it came out a month ago

*on steam

[-] jacksilver@lemmy.world 8 points 3 hours ago

That's a shame to hear, I recently played this game and it's one of the best Metroidvanias I've ever played.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 16 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 26 points 6 hours ago

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.

[-] bradbeattie@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 hours ago

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

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.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 points 36 minutes ago

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.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 19 points 6 hours ago

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.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -1 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] Letstakealook@lemm.ee 4 points 5 hours ago

I think there is some confusion here. The game genre is "2d platformer," I wasn't referring to where people can play it. It isn't the most popular genre of gaming, and it's quite different from ubisofts' other titles.

[-] yamanii@lemmy.world 1 points 44 minutes ago

What do you even mean? Hollow Knight was a massive success, so was Bloodstained, Ori, Metroid Dread, etc. People can't stop memeing that Silk song is not releasing because they refuse to forget about it, Ubi's reputation is just in the gutter so to capture the audience that enjoys these games again they have to do multiple good things, not just one and give up.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -1 points 5 hours ago

Yeah, no, I understood it. I'm saying that there are similar 2d platformers on those same platforms (look, it's not my fault language recycles words for things) that did much, much better.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

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

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 3 points 3 hours ago

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.

[-] bradbeattie@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago

Denuvo is a deal-breaker for me.

[-] Stromatose@lemmy.world 0 points 51 minutes ago

Ubisoft is in the hotseat because they let their suits have too much power over the games they produce.

I am a fan of the prince of persia series and based on the reviews I'd seen I was really interested in this title. But their absolute refusal to participate in the steam ecosystem and insistence on pushing their launcher means that I, as someone who values my own time, am not going to bother with their nonsense.

They don't understand their customers anymore. Not well enough to shift the direction of their company's initiatives. They deserve to fail even when they do manage to produce fun and interesting games because they are bad at the business aspects of being a game publisher/developer.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 44 minutes ago

Well, they're back on Steam, this game included, so there's that shift. Does that count or nah?

[-] bob_lemon@feddit.org 8 points 5 hours ago

The launch price is what killed it. In a genre dominated by AA games, games need to use AA pricetags.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 5 hours ago

It's 40 bucks. 50 with the DLC. That's the same price as Bloodstained, and that sold millions.

Also, the Steam re-release launched with a 40% discount. Nobody played it on Steam for that price, either.

This thread is full of hypotheses and retrospective rationalizations that don't quite check out.

[-] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago

On PC it requires Ubi's launcher and Denuvo. That's enough to make me completely uninterested.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -4 points 5 hours ago

Right. So you didn't make a difference here, since that's also true of all the Ubi games that did better than this, then.

But this doesn't have any of the other crap people are blaming for Ubi doing poorly. So you'd expect if the outrage was making a dent whatsoever their one game that is relatively clean of that stuff would have done better, not worse, than the other stuff they are putting out.

But nope, the opposite is true.

So hey, not saying you're lying, but I think the collective at least looked at the nice, small 2D metroidvania with no MTX and went "nah", but they were much more willing to give the GaaS-y stuff a try.

Although if I WAS saying you're not being all the way honest, I may guess that you just weren't on board for this anyway and now are performatively feigning outrage for something else after the fact to pretend other people's motivations are aligned with your opinions. But I'm not. So we're good.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

The irony of you constantly telling people they don't actually know why they do not pay Ubisoft...

My dude... We're TELLING YOU why we aren't buying it. You're just too dumb and stubborn to accept the truth. Obstinance makes you pathetic, not correct.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -3 points 3 hours ago

Right.

So, one, I'm pretty sure in most cases that's not why, for the same reasons we all shared memes of people "boycotting Call of Duty" while appearing online playing Call of Duty.

But even taking everyone at their word, I'm saying the group as a whole is not working by those parameters. Directly, demonstrably in apples to apples comparisons they didn't buy the Ubisoft game that doesn't do the stuff people claim to be mad about and bought other Ubisoft games in larger numbers.

The thing with obstinance is that it's hard to make reality change its mind. Remarkably stubborn, reality.

[-] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago

You really don't understand that the people who throw money at Ubi's standard crap and people who 2d Metroidvania games are mostly different people with different values? The CoD/Fifa/Assassin Creed crowd clearly don't give a fuck about shitty, intrusive launchers and kernel level anti-cheat.

Meanwhile, lovers of Metroidvania games looked at Prince of Persia and it's competition (games like Nine Sols) and chose one that didn't install malware on their computer.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -2 points 1 hour ago

I get that you want that to be true, but there is really no indication that this is the case. There are a lot of elements in Ubisoft's recent issues, but there is no good suggestion that any of that train of thought lines up with what we're seeing here.

More to the point, even if it was, all that suggests for Ubi as a course of action is to keep doing what they're doing. I mean, maybe launch on Steam day one, but... yeah, if you monetize the big games better and the fans of the small games won't cut you a break for making them... just don't make them.

My point stands either way.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

No, boycotts are not a corporate death knell. No one is saying that. LITERALLY no one is saying their personal decision or reasoning is the cause of this news.

EVERYONE ks pkinting at shitty things Ubisoft does, says, it caused them to not bjy it and likely is impacting others' decisions... then you come along going, "NUHUH NUHUH, Ubisoft isn't losing money because YOU didn't buy it!"

My dude... we FUCKING KNOW THAT!! We're saying UBISOFT shot themselves in the foot with shitty behavior. This article is literally about the effects of people not buying en masse, and you're saying that the NEWS WE ARE READING is not possible...

Just stop. Just stop. Boycotts most often do not work, but THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT!! This is people explaining why they stopped giving Ubisoft money. Holy fuck, you are good at doubling down on a bad idea.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 1 hour ago

No, you're not following me.

The point here isn't whether this game did poorly. It did. Cool.

The point here is that it did WORSE than other Ubisoft games.

Specifically, worse than Ubisoft games that include all the shitty behavior. More of the shitty behavior, in fact.

So the performance of the game is not correlated to the shitty behavior. Well, maybe more shitty behavior gets you better sales, that would fit, but I'm not going to jump to that.

You'd think if Ubisoft's shitty behavior is scaring people off this game would have done better than Mirage and Mirage better than Outcasts, but that's the opposite of what happened.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

People that play games like this PoP don't generally buy the other games Ubisoft sells. And the people that do play recent Ubisoft games are not going to play this.

That is why things like the anti cheat (for a single player game) turn people off.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 37 minutes ago

This doesn't have anticheat, it has DRM software, though.

But hey, if there is no overlap, then how come this did so much worse than other similarly well liked metroidvanias, right? That's been my point here. People keep pointing out that it's not comparable to other Ubi titles. I disagree, because PoP is PoP, but let's roll with that. It also underperformed compared to other games in the same genre with similar review scores.

So what happened there? Either the Ubi woes are behind this, and then it doesn't make sense because this did worse than other more Ubisofty Ubisoft games, or they are not because different demos, and that doesn't make sense because this did much worse than similar games not from Ubisoft.

I think as far as this tells us anything is that the stink of negativity is not very fact-based when it comes to the core gaming community. That and Ubisoft may not have more money to make by going to middle sized, pure and simple high quality experiences like Rayman or this. Which sucks. Those are the best games they've made in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.

[-] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 10 points 6 hours ago

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.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 2 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] BossDj@lemm.ee 8 points 5 hours ago

Casual gamer here. I'd heard of Concord. Never knew another Prince of Persia game even existed.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 5 hours ago

Hah. Did you hear about Concord before or after it left a crater visible from space?

In any case, there are two of them, in fact, and they're both good. You may be in time to help save The Rogue Prince of Persia, which is doing even worse, but if you don't mess with Early Access, Lost Crown is still up for sale and it's pretty great.

[-] BossDj@lemm.ee 3 points 4 hours ago

I saw a trailer before it came out, but it may have been in the context of how much of a guardians knockoff it was.

I'll go watch some Prince of Persia gameplay this morning!

[-] randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 5 hours ago

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.

[-] NONE_dc@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

This is the kind of shit that makes you wish for the imminent Ubisoft debacle to happen sooner rather than later.

[-] badbytes@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago

IGN though. Would consider theonion more credible news source.

[-] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 7 hours ago

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme...

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