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Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team Disbanded After Critically Lauded Platformer Fails to Meet Expectations - Report (www.ign.com)

submitted 2 days ago by simple@lemm.ee to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] bob_lemon@feddit.org 13 points 2 days ago

The launch price is what killed it. In a genre dominated by AA games, games need to use AA pricetags.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

It's 40 bucks. 50 with the DLC. That's the same price as Bloodstained, and that sold millions.

Also, the Steam re-release launched with a 40% discount. Nobody played it on Steam for that price, either.

This thread is full of hypotheses and retrospective rationalizations that don't quite check out.

[-] sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

They're competing against games like Hollow Knight which offer 40+ hours of content for less money.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -1 points 1 day ago

Hollow Knight is from 2017, I don't think it was out there draining business form this seven years later. Bloodstained is more recent, and that cost the same as PoP. Also the Ori games, which are priced the same.

Plus this launched half off on Steam and nobody bought it despite being cheaper than Bloodstained and Ori.

So... I mean, it could have been that, but it pretty clearly wasn't that.

[-] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago

On PC it requires Ubi's launcher and Denuvo. That's enough to make me completely uninterested.

[+] MudMan@fedia.io -6 points 2 days ago

Right. So you didn't make a difference here, since that's also true of all the Ubi games that did better than this, then.

But this doesn't have any of the other crap people are blaming for Ubi doing poorly. So you'd expect if the outrage was making a dent whatsoever their one game that is relatively clean of that stuff would have done better, not worse, than the other stuff they are putting out.

But nope, the opposite is true.

So hey, not saying you're lying, but I think the collective at least looked at the nice, small 2D metroidvania with no MTX and went "nah", but they were much more willing to give the GaaS-y stuff a try.

Although if I WAS saying you're not being all the way honest, I may guess that you just weren't on board for this anyway and now are performatively feigning outrage for something else after the fact to pretend other people's motivations are aligned with your opinions. But I'm not. So we're good.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

The irony of you constantly telling people they don't actually know why they do not pay Ubisoft...

My dude... We're TELLING YOU why we aren't buying it. You're just too dumb and stubborn to accept the truth. Obstinance makes you pathetic, not correct.

[-] Katana314@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

There’s still some truth to his statement.

If someone says one thing and does another…people tend to trust the action, not the words. If sales numbers indicate one thing, it doesn’t matter what people say on social media.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -4 points 2 days ago

Right.

So, one, I'm pretty sure in most cases that's not why, for the same reasons we all shared memes of people "boycotting Call of Duty" while appearing online playing Call of Duty.

But even taking everyone at their word, I'm saying the group as a whole is not working by those parameters. Directly, demonstrably in apples to apples comparisons they didn't buy the Ubisoft game that doesn't do the stuff people claim to be mad about and bought other Ubisoft games in larger numbers.

The thing with obstinance is that it's hard to make reality change its mind. Remarkably stubborn, reality.

[-] TheLowestStone@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

You really don't understand that the people who throw money at Ubi's standard crap and people who 2d Metroidvania games are mostly different people with different values? The CoD/Fifa/Assassin Creed crowd clearly don't give a fuck about shitty, intrusive launchers and kernel level anti-cheat.

Meanwhile, lovers of Metroidvania games looked at Prince of Persia and it's competition (games like Nine Sols) and chose one that didn't install malware on their computer.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io -3 points 2 days ago

I get that you want that to be true, but there is really no indication that this is the case. There are a lot of elements in Ubisoft's recent issues, but there is no good suggestion that any of that train of thought lines up with what we're seeing here.

More to the point, even if it was, all that suggests for Ubi as a course of action is to keep doing what they're doing. I mean, maybe launch on Steam day one, but... yeah, if you monetize the big games better and the fans of the small games won't cut you a break for making them... just don't make them.

My point stands either way.

[-] MotoAsh@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No, boycotts are not a corporate death knell. No one is saying that. LITERALLY no one is saying their personal decision or reasoning is the cause of this news.

EVERYONE ks pkinting at shitty things Ubisoft does, says, it caused them to not bjy it and likely is impacting others' decisions... then you come along going, "NUHUH NUHUH, Ubisoft isn't losing money because YOU didn't buy it!"

My dude... we FUCKING KNOW THAT!! We're saying UBISOFT shot themselves in the foot with shitty behavior. This article is literally about the effects of people not buying en masse, and you're saying that the NEWS WE ARE READING is not possible...

Just stop. Just stop. Boycotts most often do not work, but THIS IS NOT A BOYCOTT!! This is people explaining why they stopped giving Ubisoft money. Holy fuck, you are good at doubling down on a bad idea.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 2 days ago

No, you're not following me.

The point here isn't whether this game did poorly. It did. Cool.

The point here is that it did WORSE than other Ubisoft games.

Specifically, worse than Ubisoft games that include all the shitty behavior. More of the shitty behavior, in fact.

So the performance of the game is not correlated to the shitty behavior. Well, maybe more shitty behavior gets you better sales, that would fit, but I'm not going to jump to that.

You'd think if Ubisoft's shitty behavior is scaring people off this game would have done better than Mirage and Mirage better than Outcasts, but that's the opposite of what happened.

[-] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

People that play games like this PoP don't generally buy the other games Ubisoft sells. And the people that do play recent Ubisoft games are not going to play this.

That is why things like the anti cheat (for a single player game) turn people off.

[-] MudMan@fedia.io 0 points 2 days ago

This doesn't have anticheat, it has DRM software, though.

But hey, if there is no overlap, then how come this did so much worse than other similarly well liked metroidvanias, right? That's been my point here. People keep pointing out that it's not comparable to other Ubi titles. I disagree, because PoP is PoP, but let's roll with that. It also underperformed compared to other games in the same genre with similar review scores.

So what happened there? Either the Ubi woes are behind this, and then it doesn't make sense because this did worse than other more Ubisofty Ubisoft games, or they are not because different demos, and that doesn't make sense because this did much worse than similar games not from Ubisoft.

I think as far as this tells us anything is that the stink of negativity is not very fact-based when it comes to the core gaming community. That and Ubisoft may not have more money to make by going to middle sized, pure and simple high quality experiences like Rayman or this. Which sucks. Those are the best games they've made in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.