Support NeoGAF

[DenchDeckard]

I've heard great things about this game and will deffo pick it up. There's jist too many amazing games in my wheelhouse that I'm playing.

 

[Rentahamster]

 

[rubenburgt]

I'm not surprised, and I'm not surprised to see Ubisoft failing so hard.

I have been playing the latest Dragonball game a lot recently, and it has been a while since I played game that felt complete and made with love. There are no micro transactions, battle passes or lootboxes. You just play to unlock everything. Its feels like I'm back in the 2000's again, when games were made for the gamers and not for a profit alone.

When was the last time Ubisoft made such a game? Prince of Persia? Nah.

 

[Dazraell]

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.

Sargon's design was probably a large contributor, but I feel a lot of problems for this game originated from that god awful "modern times" reveal trailer. This was shown on one of the showcases and damn, it didn't landed. If you ever played previous games everything in this trailer was just terrible. If this was supposed to build your excitement for the game, nah, it did the exact opposite

 

[Calico345]

Yet it was the best game to come out of there in years...

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

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.

What 2d games are you playing that both great gameplay and cutting edge graphics? There aren't many ..this game also didn't look bad at all...not amazing but pretty nice for what it is

 

[I Love Rock 'n' Roll]

Just imagine how good their second and third games could have been... Ubisoft management is the worst of the worst and has no clue on how to manage a portfolio and how to support games with different scopes!

 

[Sellyprime]

I guess some of you forgot that an ubi exec said we need to be comfortable a out not owning our game 2 days before this came out

 

[genesisblock]

That price tag is just wrong. Probably the reason why the game failed.

 

[Randall365]

I think this is on the idiots who conceived Outlaws and Shadows. Games like this are always a slow burn and most likely make their money back in sales over a long period of time. Ubi are haemoraging money thanks to their recent triple A shit.

 

[Toons]

Good. I am happy they are going down. Any company that continue the same wokness and LGPTQ crap being forced into gaming will lose business and staff gets fired .

We don’t need this in gaming and it’s already showing . So good riddance

Sad the game was decent. But when you have a company with shitty and force this shit on us, normal gamers will fight back. And the results are people telling Ubisoft to fuck u and ur game. Even if it’s actually good.

Good bye Ubicrap

You have a thread about a game that is by all accounts good and well made failing to be successful(this is a bad thing) and you still someone manage to make it a whine session about gay people.

Good games should be rewarded for being good games, not used as notches in a culture war crusade that has no end.

 

[Toons]

Agreed 100%

I never understood why The Lost Crown got a "Woke" designation, is it because the main character?

No, its because this culture war BS us a sham used by grifters to make money and push their own numbers and clout, at the expense of decent games snd decent creatives.. even onto games that have little or nothing to do with it. Not even ghost of yotei is immune. It never goes anywhere, it never accomplishes anything, just keeps cycling around thr same talking points and consuming more games and gsme discussion until it's impossible to even have a conversation or to like a game without having to sift though this.

I was rooting for this one. Its a shame

 

[Madserb2023]

The game was amazing but the price was wrong. It really is up there with the best of its genres. Might even prefer it to Metroid Dread. However, the price was too high for the current market. People expect these games to be indie prices like Hollow Night. Metroid is unique in this regard.

 

[Giallo Corsa]

You have a thread about a game that is by all accounts good and well made failing to be successful(this is a bad thing) and you still someone manage to make it a whine session about gay people.

Good games should be rewarded for being good games, not used as notches in a culture war crusade that has no end.

 

[Herbspiceguy]

Not a single mention of 'The Rogue Prince of Persia', which is developed by the critically acclaimed Dead Cells devs, published by Ubisoft and released (in EA) just 5 months prior to 'Prince of Persia the Lost Crown'.

It struck me as odd and confusing for the market to release 2 2(.5)D platformers of the same franchise within such a close time frame.

 

[Filben]

What more do you want, not everything is going to sell 3 million copies.

With Ubisoft's overhead and many departments struggling and therefore management's unwillingness to subsidize deficient projects they, unfortunately, need to sell millions. Which game/project achieves that is almost irrelevant, but since Assassin's Creed ain't pulling the necessary numbers as well... well, they have little to show for. There are too big, expanded too quickly so they can't really go for innovation either. I'm going to ramble and I apologize for my long-winded remarks in advance.

All in all management was too short-sighted, thought they could ride the train they were riding for over a decade now forever and people would buy it. They couldn't foresee inflation and global crisises but you could foresee that Covid will vanish somewhen and everything goes back to normal. Now they have to deal with the consequences, too high overhead costs whether they do something or not. So it's either firing people and shrink or put out a banger every year – or better yet, twice or thrice a year – that sells million after million. The latter won't happen for various and probably known reasons.

It's a shame that smaller (Ubisoft) teams are thrown under the bus because of short-sighted management. And the worst: management is usually the one getting away with it. Let's say Ubisoft is being sold, they will still earn a shitload of money and find something new because labour market isn't particual flooded with those people, contrary to like hundreds or thousands of programmers, the way they keep going with it.

Best way is to shrink in size, reduce yearly costs and ambitions (to squeeze every penny out of people). If you're forced to release games every year or even every other month nothing good will come from it. Make high quality games (not in terms of production values, but fun and good games) with innovations. Respect players' time and income, especially the former becoming a bigger problem with the rise of GaaS games. You want people to stick to your GaaS games that are manipulative and riddled with dark patterns and at the same time you want them to buy your newest shit. This is not going to work forever. Even if you put out a real good game and even if people had the money (usually those with a stable income but less time for gaming) they still need time for that game. And gamers becoming more and more patient it's not particular hard to wait on sales if you put your game on sale three months after release. And with limited time (and, in some cases, limited income) there's little room for mediocrity, so of course players' expectations are high. This is a homemade problem by these companies, though.

 

[Gilgalaad]

I really enjoyed this Prince of Persia, sad news. The team doesn’t deserve this.

Stupid decision by Ubisoft. One more.

 

[Heisenberg007]

The Last Crown was the best Ubisoft game in YEARS.

I was really looking forward to a sequel. What a shame. Another good metroidvania bites the dust.

 

[ManaByte]

Racist grifter who didn't play one of the best games of the year:

 

[KXVXII9X]

I'm not surprised, and I'm not surprised to see Ubisoft failing so hard.

I have been playing the latest Dragonball game a lot recently, and it has been a while since I played game that felt complete and made with love. There are no micro transactions, battle passes or lootboxes. You just play to unlock everything. Its feels like I'm back in the 2000's again, when games were made for the gamers and not for a profit alone.

When was the last time Ubisoft made such a game? Prince of Persia? Nah.

Prince of Persia is exactly that kind of game. Same with Mario and Rabbids series. The ignorance from gamers is maddening. You guys complain about the industry but go around spreading misinformation and have all of these contradictions. I no longer just blame publishers.

 

[Little Mac]

I'm a sucker for metroidvanias and I bought it several months ago digitally off PSN. Played it all the way to the snake boss (maybe halfway through the game). Had a great time with it. I think I stopped playing because I got lost into Helldivers 2 but I always intended on going back and restarting when I had free time. I agree with others here that it's probably the best thing to come out of Ubisoft in a while.

 

[KXVXII9X]

That price tag is just wrong. Probably the reason why the game failed.

It went down to like $30 though. It has a much bigger production value than most Metroidvanias, despite what people think of the art style. It also has a ton of content. It is on the same level as Metroid Dread.

 

[Woopah]

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.

I think that complaint makes more sense.

Having said that, it's not like the Prince has always looked like a Prince. In previous games he looked like the guitarist from an emo band.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

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.

This is the right answer.

In short: know your audience.

 

[PatientGamer]

Call me shallow but I just couldn't bring myself to buy a game with the main character with that stupid fucking haircut.

Even IGN of all places called it out

Killmonger in Black Panther 2018 had it, and gaming media went "oohh... let's make all our black guys have this hairstyle"

 

[//DEVIL//]

You have a thread about a game that is by all accounts good and well made failing to be successful(this is a bad thing) and you still someone manage to make it a whine session about gay people.

Good games should be rewarded for being good games, not used as notches in a culture war crusade that has no end.

When a company has a shitty name and public image, good games will suffer at one point.

would you support a local store when you know the owners are shit people even though they have good products ? Or would you buy from a different store ?

if the company is shit, people retaliate.

 

[64bitmodels]

Video games are the only hobby on the planet where a well made, genuinely great game with passion behind it will fail due to a fucking hairstyle and people will justify it and say that it's somehow reasonable and for the better of the hobby

You guys get the industry you deserve

 

[64bitmodels]

would you support a local store when you know the owners are shit people even though they have good products ? Or would you buy from a different store ?

Literally everyone here who buys a Nintendo system does.

 

[//DEVIL//]

Literally everyone here who buys a Nintendo system does.

I don’t see a Nintendo a shitty company or has an agenda movement behind their action .

In my eyes Nintendo is the only good company out of 3 where they still saving traditional gaming.

 

[64bitmodels]

I don’t see a Nintendo a shitty company or has an agenda movement behind their action.

Well you'd be dead wrong. Nintendo has been down to shady and terrible practices since the NES. They aren't a very good company, but like Disney they hide the shittiness with a family friendly persona.

 

[//DEVIL//]

Well you'd be dead wrong. Nintendo has been down to shady and terrible practices since the NES. They aren't a very good company, but like Disney they hide the shittiness with a family friendly persona.

I honestly don’t know what are u talking about aside from their fighting for their IPs rights very hard on all fronts.

But for most anyway, Ubisoft is a bad company and people hate them. So there is that

 

[Nikodemos]

I honestly don’t know what are u talking about aside from their fighting for their IPs rights very hard on all fronts.

They patent troll, shut down everything they feel can show them in a bad light (see copyright strikes against YT content), but they only ever go against small players. They haven't done anything against Switch piracy on the Steam Deck, because they know it's not a surefire victory. Even Tim Sweeney's crusade against mobile phone storefronts is more righteous that whatever the fuck Nintendo does. They just hide it really well.

 

[Trilobit]

Racist grifter who didn't play one of the best games of the year:

I'm not American, is that a super popular hairstyle in the States?

 

[SportsFan581]

That's too bad. Platforming is at its best in 2D IMO. That business review they've mentioned is probably a necessary step for them, they have to keep the budgets in line with realistic expectations.

You kind of get the feeling that they are going to end up being the AC/FC studio and nothing more. Everything they've tried outside of that hasn't hit the mark. Not something I'm happy about, it's just reduces whats available at this budget. There are a ton of games being released, but most are very low budget, the mid-high budget releases are more limited now than ever.

 

[The Cockatrice]

Racist grifter who didn't play one of the best games of the year:

He's an idiot but hes spot on in regards to the hairstyle.

Black men have only one type of hair huh? If anyone is racist its Ubisoft.

 

[TheChumpNation]

The xbox/ps2 trilogy are some of my favourite games ever, but one look at the visuals in this (not graphical fidelity, but colours, character design etc) turned me off.

 

[rm082e]

I picked it up on sale and played a few hours. It didn't feel like a PoP game, and it didn't really grab me. It was "fine".

I'll try to get back to it at some point and see if there's anything more interesting there, but it's low on my priority list.

 

[diffusionx]

Racist grifter who didn't play one of the best games of the year:

Grummz is cringe but making Sargon look exactly like Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther was a totally bizarre choice.

 

[Psychostar]

Disappointing news. I really enjoyed this and it was a great buffer for Silksong's release. Genuinely loved this game. I got the plat and convinced a buddy to also give the game ago, who also ended up loving it too. I would have happily bought a sequel. Not really interested in buying the DLC.

 

[playbignbox]

A lot of people in this thread are saying that Ubisoft's sales expectations were too high, but we can't find any numbers on the internet, other than 300k close to launch, which is not impressive at all. I don't know why people are so defensive in these situations.

 

[Bert Big Balls]

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.

I used to love playing Splinter Cell on the PS2. The games felt and looked ahead of their time IMO.

 

[Kacho]

I'm not American, is that a super popular hairstyle in the States?

Nah. Younger dudes rock dreads but they don't do the shaved head thing. Older guys are bald or have a fade.

 

[Evil Calvin]

Why do all of these publishers say 'didn't meet expectations'? How about keep your expectations in check...maybe make them manageable. Fuck the investors!!!

 

[kruis]

With Ubisoft's overhead and many departments struggling and therefore management's unwillingness to subsidize deficient projects they, unfortunately, need to sell millions. Which game/project achieves that is almost irrelevant, but since Assassin's Creed ain't pulling the necessary numbers as well... well, they have little to show for. There are too big, expanded too quickly so they can't really go for innovation either. I'm going to ramble and I apologize for my long-winded remarks in advance.

All in all management was too short-sighted, thought they could ride the train they were riding for over a decade now forever and people would buy it. They couldn't foresee inflation and global crisises but you could foresee that Covid will vanish somewhen and everything goes back to normal. Now they have to deal with the consequences, too high overhead costs whether they do something or not. So it's either firing people and shrink or put out a banger every year – or better yet, twice or thrice a year – that sells million after million. The latter won't happen for various and probably known reasons.

It's a shame that smaller (Ubisoft) teams are thrown under the bus because of short-sighted management. And the worst: management is usually the one getting away with it. Let's say Ubisoft is being sold, they will still earn a shitload of money and find something new because labour market isn't particual flooded with those people, contrary to like hundreds or thousands of programmers, the way they keep going with it.

Best way is to shrink in size, reduce yearly costs and ambitions (to squeeze every penny out of people). If you're forced to release games every year or even every other month nothing good will come from it. Make high quality games (not in terms of production values, but fun and good games) with innovations. Respect players' time and income, especially the former becoming a bigger problem with the rise of GaaS games. You want people to stick to your GaaS games that are manipulative and riddled with dark patterns and at the same time you want them to buy your newest shit. This is not going to work forever. Even if you put out a real good game and even if people had the money (usually those with a stable income but less time for gaming) they still need time for that game. And gamers becoming more and more patient it's not particular hard to wait on sales if you put your game on sale three months after release. And with limited time (and, in some cases, limited income) there's little room for mediocrity, so of course players' expectations are high. This is a homemade problem by these companies, though.

Great post. You even forgot to mention that Ubisoft's long been notorious for mismanaged projects that seem(ed) to remain in development hell forever: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Skull and Bones, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Another issue is the number of poor selling games Ubisoft crapped out. Lots of bad management decisions, enormous amounts of money wasted but Ubisoft always had a few successful games (AC, Far Cry, Tom Clancy) that made enough of money to bail out the financial failures. But that MO isn't working anymore when the failures are so numerous and expensive. Avatar, Star Wars Outlaws, PoP: The Lost Crown, Skull and Bones, Xdefiant plus the delay of AC:Shadows ... ouch!

 

[SlimySnake]

Racist grifter who didn't play one of the best games of the year:

he's racist but i also dont understand why an arab or rather persian dude has that hair.

 

[CLW]

It's a good game, well made. What more do you want, not everything is going to sell 3 million copies.

Yes but you need ROI the risk is greater than an sp500 etf so you gotta deliver probably 50% profit to justify the risk

 

[Evil Calvin]

.............But apparently we're getting 10 Assassin's Creed games in the next 5 years. (yes Ubisoft said that)

 

[MiguelItUp]

Best game Ubi had done in awhile IMO, it's a shame, but they're digging their own grave.

 

[strike670]

I said this in another thread, but Ubisoft games are nearly half off only 2-3 months after release. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown can be bought for $19.99 now and that is 8 months after release. So why would anyone rush and pay $69.99 or $49.99 for this title when you know if you wait it out, it will be half of that price in a short time and also the patches for their bug filled games will be released by then.

They are not a well run company and how they treat their employees says as much.

 

[strike670]

Can I get this game at a discount now?

$20