Didn't even know this existed, sounded like another case of "We made a game and didn't do any marketing for it, made absolutely no effort to let anyone know this even existed. I guess this means this genre and IP are worthless."
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They didn't even release it on Steam
At this point that's the video game equivalent of "We only opened our movie in like 3 towns for two weekends despite not being an indie studio, and somehow that didn't sell gangbusters, guess the movie is crap."
Sorry, they didn't release it on Steam at launch.
I'm assuming Ubisoft thought people would blindly cash in on a a legacy franchise. I'm sure the game was fine, but nothing mindblowing. Just didn't make enough money for the cash money execs.
I’d put it almost on par with Hollow Knight. One of the best modern Metroidvanias I’ve played.
It's actually a really good game, though of course it has some problems. The real issue is the fact that most people weren't even aware that it existed.
Perhaps the reason is more simple. When did we have a non-indie platformer title well received by the mass? I don't think people want a combo of "platformer" and "AAA" (hence the price).
"why are people not buying our games? Please only give answers where we are not at fault and admit no wrongdoing"
The big reason I'm hearing in this thread is "Denuvo and I don't trust Ubisoft." However I doubt that is the reason the mainstream audience skipped over this game. Ubisoft franchises generally sell like hotcakes, and for the most part only nerds care about DRM (like the type of person who knows what a lemmy is).
It's hard to say why it didn't sell more units. Certainly it seems their internal expectations were sky high:
similarly to the biggest Metroidvania’s in the market, with millions of units sold in a relatively short space of time
The game is good, but metroidvania is not exactly an easy market; there's some juggernauts in that genre, and they came out with a completely new and unproven concept. Apparently it sold a million units or so still, to me that's not unimpressive.
On PC, it initially launched only on Epic afaik, which certainly doesn't help. And by the time they brought it to steam it was much too late.
What I don't really get is, why disband the team? They've proven they can produce quality stuff. Just hand them some other promising projects? I suppose that's too much of a risk for a publisher like Ubisoft.
Prince of Persia is such a IP almost no one cares about and most people know that it has something to do with AC in some way.
How the mighty have fallen eh? Prince of Persia was a big franchise once upon a time. Like, the Sands of time trilogy was AAA tier.
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.