Another day, another story of Ubisoft’s continued failure. Between failed sales, cultural controversies, and, more recently, employee strikes, the company seems eternally stuck in a downward spiral, with the leadership making one bad decision after another.
To add to the point that Ubisoft is hemorrhaging internally now, news has surfaced that the company seems to have disbanded the development team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, making it clear that this once-great titan’s demise is more inevitable now than avoidable.
Ubisoft Has Disbanded The Lost Crown‘s Team and Dashed All Our Hopes for a Sequel
Now, let’s get one thing straight first—The Lost Crown was a genuinely good game and a masterpiece by Ubisoft’s standards, with many heralding it as a bold new approach to a once-beloved franchise.
With its intelligent design choices and finely tuned mechanics, the game garnered respectable critical acclaim, too, with most certain in its potential to revitalize the Prince of Persia IP. But, as its publisher has reported before, it didn’t sell as expected.
Before we go any further, though, we really need to ask—is Ubisoft setting false expectations for its projects internally? Unmet targets have been a consistent issue for every game from the company this year.
It almost feels as though the leadership sets false expectations for its projects and overshoots sales targets in front of its investors, all while creating an environment where development teams face impossible pressure to perform.
The result? The alleged disbanding of The Lost Crown’s development team—right after the release of the game’s story DLC, might we add—along with killing all hope for a sequel. For a company desperate to regain relevance, axing a talented team that produced a solid game seems counterproductive.
Worse, this is not an isolated case. Despite public denials, the French publisher continues to face rumors of XDefiant’s potential closure after its fourth season, and if we’re being honest, it’s hard to take the company’s statements at face value anymore.
After all, this is another promising title from this company plagued by a myriad of unfixed issues. Despite Mark Rubin’s assurances that no harm will come to it, you just cannot help but wonder if it, too, could meet an untimely end. With Ubisoft’s reputation for shifting resources from moderately successful titles toward higher-profile but creatively bankrupt games, the company seems incapable of managing its assets efficiently, leading to team dissolutions and canceled projects.
All that’s left, then, is to ask: What’s most likely to be axed next: another promising but ill-fated and oversold project or the company itself?
It’s Difficult to See Ubisoft Making It to the End of the Current Generation’s Finish Line
It would be one thing if Prince of Persia was the only IP suffering here. Star Wars Outlaws also didn’t meet sales projections, and Ubisoft’s once-proud Assassin’s Creed franchise seems to be losing steam.
Assassin’s Creed Shadows has been bogged down by cultural controversies, while future projects are nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, massive employee strikes and dissatisfaction with pay continue to weaken the company’s ability to deliver on any of its promises.
Let’s also not forget that Skull and Bones—the publisher’s “AAAA” flagship project—has become a symbol of Ubisoft’s decline. It was plagued by delays and derision and simply ended up as a laughingstock.
With stock prices still abysmally low and an embarrassing valuation, it’s clear that Ubisoft will most likely be sold to Tencent by the end of the year. But would Tencent’s acquisition breathe life back into Ubisoft or be the company’s final nail in the coffin? That, for now, remains to be seen.
But with all that said, what are your thoughts on the alleged disbandment of The Lost Crown’s dev team? Do you think other IPs, such as Skull and Bones or XDefiant, could follow suit? Let us know in the comments below!
