Many people may have already forgotten aboutPrince of Persia: The Lost Crown, despite the fact it’s one of the best platformers released this year. Ubisoft hasn’t forgotten about it, but instead of rewarding the team behind it for creating a unique entry into an iconic series,it has disbandedit.
For what reason? The Lost Crown wascritically lauded– it achieved an impressive86 on Metacriticand87 on Opencritic– and players seem to love it, too. The problem is, there weren’t enough players.
What Went Wrong For Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown?
Estimates in February suggested thataround 300,000 players bought The Lost Crownin its first month. While that seems like a big number, it’svery low by Ubisoft’s standards. Considering Palworld sucked in millions during the same time period, you can see why Ubisoft executives canned a sequel.
But that doesn’t make it fair. The games industry is rapidly heading towards a world where big studios release one multi-billion dollar game a decade, putting all their eggs in one pixelated basket. I’m sure GTA 6 will be good, and will make back its eye-watering budget in a matter of days, but not every game can (or should) take the same risks.
If a game of that size flops, it can break an entire studio. Ubisoft has seen this with Star Wars Outlaws and was clearly worried about the same thing happening with Assassin’s Creed Shadows, hence the last-minute delay. For a smaller game, though, it should be less of an issue. Especially when that game is a banger.
We don’t know what The Lost Crown’s budget was, nor do we know how much money it made. Estimates suggest that it earned around $15 million in sales, but with no knowledge of costs we can’t tell if that number puts it in the black or the red. But I can tell you that it won’t have had a budget anywhere near Outlaws and Shadows, and therefore any losses won’t have been as devastating for the company. It’s all relative, but corporations expect games to earn millions in seconds. There’s no room for modest success in modern games.
History Is Doomed To Repeat Itself
We’ve seen this happen time and time again. Remember Hi-Fi Rush? Another great game with focused mechanics that told a brilliant story that was released early in the year and soon after abandoned by executives. Thankfully many of the developers of this lovely little game were saved by Krafton, along with the Hi-Fi IP, so the chances of a sequel are possible, but there’s no hope for those who worked on The Lost Crown.
While we haven’t heard of any layoffs (for once), in all likelihood, this team will be put to work on polishing Assassin’s Creed Shadows ahead of launch or designing a new operator for XDefiant. A much more worthy cause than creating smaller, more innovative games that push genre boundaries and breathe new life into classic properties.
Not every small team will have a massive corporation to bail it out. And what happens if 2 Hi-Fi 2 Rush bombs? Its developers are still beholden to an enormous company that expects enormous profits from every title. Gone are the days when studios could pepper their schedules with neat double-A titles in between the big releases. Ubisoft doesn’t care about creating a legacy of beloved gems, it just wants to maximise profits with monumental releases and live-service sludge. Does it matter if those big releases are generic and receive middling review scores? Not really, because people will pre-order the collector’s edition before they know if it’s good or not.
This isn’t sustainable, especially for a company with the pedigree of Ubisoft. Why bin your first game to earn a review average of over 80 since 2022’s Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope? Why not cease the live-service additions to Skull & Bones, a game that was doomed to fail after its decade of development hell, rather than shutter your chances at a more financially successful successor to a well-received game?
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown deserved better than this. The games industry deserves better than this.
