During The Game Awards last night, we saw a ton of new games, a lot of controversy with the awards, and a whole lot of excitement. But during the start of the show, an Innovation & Accessibility award was given out to a game that went well under the radar. The nominations for the award were as follows:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Diablo IV
- Dragon Age: The Veilguard
- Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
- Star Wars Outlaws
And out of the list of absolute heavy hitters, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown took the award, and rightfully so. Although this award only talks about innovation and accessibility alone, The Lost Crown was a truly great game for anyone who has ever played a Metroidvania game before.
The best part is that all games on the list except Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown are AAA titles from massive studios, and one is even made by Ubisoft itself. This is a testament to the quality that the game delivered in every aspect, but what happened to the developers in return was unfair, to say the least.
Although it’s one of the best Ubisoft games in recent memory, it underperformed commercially likely due to a lack of trust in the Ubisoft brand. Those who did give it a shot were pleasantly surprised by how remarkably good everything was. Even critically, the game got rave reviews from every outlet, including The Nerd Stash.
As a result, Ubisoft disbanded the Montpellier team that made the game saying the developers could be “better used in other teams” at Ubisoft. On the other hand, the Star Wars Outlaws team, which shipped a disappointing product, made it out of the whole situation unscathed. Just to put things into perspective, Star Wars Outlaws’ underwhelming launch was likely the major driving factor behind Ubisoft’s poor financial position right now – the lowest it has been in the last 10 years.
This is no different from what happened to Hi-Fi Rush, another great game that delivered in every way, but the studio was snuffed out to put more effort into generic run-of-the-mill microtransaction-laden titles instead of truly well-made games that push their respective genre forward.
It’s truly a shame that we’ll likely never see a Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown sequel somewhere down the line because of corporate greed. What we will continue to see are bloated open-world maps with padded and soulless checklists that are trademarked Ubisoft productions.
