- Ubisoft, once a pioneer of open-world games with franchises like Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed, has experienced a sharp decline. Its expensive AAA and AAAA releases have become failures.
- Surprisingly, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, a smaller AA title, became one of Ubisoft’s biggest successes in recent years, praised for its art style, fluid combat, and impressive puzzle design.
- Despite this unexpected success, Ubisoft disbanded the game’s development team. At the same time, larger projects like Skull and Bones continued draining resources, leaving Assassin’s Creed Shadows as the company’s last hope for redemption amidst acquisition speculations.
Ubisoft was the pioneer of open-world games and created iconic franchises such as Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. However, its downfall was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history. Every time they hit rock bottom, it only gets worse from there.
Despite its constant pushes to release highly anticipated AAA and AAAA releases that were quite costly, they ended up as expensive failures. However, if Ubisoft had a single successful release this decade, it would have been Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, an AA release that nobody expected to do great.
Why It Matters: Ubisoft was one of the biggest publishers of the 2010s and a staple of open-world AAA games. It is quite disappointing to see how much their direction has changed. Their only success was a smaller project that nobody cared about.
Nobody Expected Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown To Be Great
To be honest, from the get-go, I was one of the people who expressed disappointment towards the first reveal of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the very first new entry in the franchise in over a decade.
A different protagonist seemed like a fresh start for Ubisoft, but as a Metroidvania game, it wasn’t exactly what sold me in the beginning. My views changed when the game finally launched alongside many others.
Ubisoft redeemed itself with the title, and honestly, no one saw it coming, even Ubisoft, as a matter of fact. Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown has an amazing art style, fluid combat for a 2D game, and some of the best puzzle sequences in the series. Overall, it just feels fantastic.
For a Metroidvania game, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown hit a 300k concurrent player count on Steam, which is a respectable figure.
Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown Seems Like An Accidental Win
Being an AA game with a smaller budget, it seems like the developers behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown had quite the freedom over the project. Ubisoft Montpellier absolutely nailed the Prince of Persia aspect.
However, Ubisoft reportedly disbanded the entire team that worked on the project, and the sequel that was being worked on was also dismissed. Instead of wasting resources and vast chunks of money on projects like Skulls and Bones, which took almost a decade of development and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe it should focus on smaller projects.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown was the obvious calling for it. Still, the company doesn’t seem to learn, and with the current predictions, the French publisher is expected to go bankrupt by the end of next year.
Ubisoft Has A Last Chance At Redemption
Aside from the smaller Mirage project Assassin’s Creed Shadows, the first primary entry in the Assassin’s Creed Shadows is expected to revitalize the series and return it to its frequent release cycle.
However, Assassin’s Creed Shadows already seems to be in deep trouble because it features an African American protagonist in a long-awaited, feudal Japanese setting. The game’s delay hopefully means a polished launch with at least some aspects being fixed that were called out.
I genuinely want Assassin’s Creed Shadows to succeed because it’s the only project that can pull Ubisoft out of the swamp. Aside from Shadows, the Splinter Cell remake is also expected to drop sometime in 2026. However, if Shadows fails, it will be too late for Splinter Cell to save Ubisoft.
If all else fails, some major corporations may acquire Ubisoft, and Tencent seems to be a strong candidate. I want Sony to acquire Ubisoft, and that way, it can even its grounds with Microsoft acquiring Activision.
Hopefully, under an acquisition, Ubisoft may relive the glory days that it once had. One can only wish.
