Ubisoft Montpellier, the developer behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, has disbanded the team behind the 2024 action-adventure game because it failed to meet the sales expectations of its parent company, Ubisoft, according to a new report that has surfaced online. French game journalist “Gautoz,” who shared the claim today as part of a new YouTube video, explained that while the team had fought to get a sequel and/or expansions greenlit, Ubisoft pulled the plug entirely, opting to move the developers onto other projects. “I did not anticipate having such a blast with this game,” reads one review for the Metroidvania title, which launched in January 2024 before releasing on Steam in August.
J'ai entendu ou lu "la meilleure prod' de ma vie" trois ou quatre fois en un week-end à propos du développement de PoP The Lost Crown. Tour à tour espoir d'une autre manière de créer et zone de réhabilitation pour gens crâmés par BGE2, l'équipe a été dissoute par Ubisoft. https://t.co/FFz9cfm4xj
— Gautoz (@gautoz) October 22, 2024
Internally, the fate of the game was already decided a few weeks after the release of the game, it was clear in Spring that after releasing a few DLCs and Cosmetics it would be the end. A few members of the core dev team fought to get a sequel greenlit which did not happen, then they pushed for two expansions hoping that it would work this time but it didn’t since Ubisoft needed more hands to help on other projects that had a better sales potential which wasn’t the case with Lost Crown not meeting sales expectations. Another crazy justification that the dev team received from higher-ups was that releasing a sequel for the game would cannibalize long term sales of the first game.