Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was one of the first critical darlings of 2024. The game received high marks from most reviewers, and currently holds a “Generally Favorable” score of 86 on Metacritic. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing we’ve learned in 2024, it’s that video game companies have little interest in critical praise if it doesn’t equate to immediate sales. According to a new report from French gaming journalist Gautoz (via ResetEra), the game has thus far failed to meet sales expectations. As a result, Ubisoft turned down a sequel pitch for The Lost Crown and has apparently disbanded the development team.

In the report, Gautoz states that one of the reasons Ubisoft declined a sequel is because they were worried about cutting into longterm sales of The Lost Crown. Ironically, Ubisoft failed to heed similar advice a few years ago, when Nintendo recommended that the publisher hold off on making a sequel to Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. That game’s sequel, Sparks of Hope, ended up struggling to find an audience, and the series seems to be dead. It sounds like Ubisoft may have learned a lesson from that experience, but to the detriment of the Prince of Persia series, and the developers that wanted to continue working on it.

It should be noted that Ubisoft has yet to confirm this report, and we don’t know exactly what “disbanded” means in this regard. It seems unlikely that Ubisoft Montpellier has been closed altogether, given that the studio has been working on Beyond Good and Evil 2. It’s possible that the group that was working on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and its DLC is simply going back to work on Beyond Good and Evil 2. Hopefully no one was let go from the company as a result, but we’ll have to wait for word from Ubisoft before we know for sure.

As noted by Gautoz, development on The Lost Crown had been something of a relief for the developers. Development on Beyond Good and Evil 2 has been nothing short of a disaster for Ubisoft, with the longest development cycle ever held by a video game. While the publisher continues to insist that the game is coming out, there has been nothing resembling a release date or even a release window. If Ubisoft Montpellier is now focusing all of its efforts on getting Beyond Good and Evil 2 across the finish line, maybe the game will finally, actually release.

Posted: Oct 27, 2024 10:45 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/prince-of-persia-the-lost-crown-sequel-decline-developer-disbanded-ubisoft/