You may have heard that Ubisoft is disbanding the development team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Although the Montpellier team themselves have not been shut down it seems the people responsible have been dissolved as we reported. To add more salt to the wound, the studio was denied the chance to work on a sequel. Ubisoft’s justification is pretty simple: sales didn’t match their expectations. It’s even worse when you think we and many other outlets gave it very good scores in our reviews. Fortunately, a big player in the gaming landscape had something to say about the entire situation.
An unlikely voice with opinions on this story has come to the defense of the staff behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. And the voice is that of Michael Douse. The name doesn’t ring a bell? How about we try the director of publishing at Larian? You know, the studio behind the multiple award-winning RPG, Baldur’s Gate 3. Long story short, he should know a thing or two about publishing a game. In his view, the blame for the poor sales performance lies on the shoulders of Ubisoft’s management. The question still remains: Are Ubisoft to blame after all or could we be missing something? Let’s give Michael Douse the chance to explain, shall we?
Ubisoft Responsible For Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s Poor Sales? Michael Douse Of Larian Says “Yes!”
Now in an article from Michael lays the blame squarely on Ubisoft and how it was sold. The game launched on 18th January this year on PC. However, the PC release was exclusive to the Epic and Ubisoft stores. Yes, today the game is also available on Steam since 6th August. However, as mentioned in an article from 80Level, Douse feels that both Epic’s and Ubisoft’s stores lose the popularity contest among players when they come crashing against Steam. His point is that Ubisoft should have used Steam from day one to help with sales. This is what he said:
“The last notable game on their platform was arguably Far Cry 6 in 2021. The Crew, Mirage and Avatar came in 2023 and didn’t perform, so you can assume subscriptions were at a lull when PoP released by 2024. Which means people wouldn’t be launching their store all too much.
If it had released on Steam not only would it have been a market success, but there would likely be a sequel because the team are so strong. It’s such a broken strategy. The hardest thing is to make a 85+ game — it is much, much easier to release one. It just shouldn’t be done as it was.
Of course, we can all speculate about what should’ve, would’ve, could’ve been in retrospect. The only way to know for sure is by using a time machine and somehow convincing Ubisoft to release The Lost Crown on Steam from day 1. And as you know, time travel is still not an option in 2024.
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