Ubisoft has confirmed that most of the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown team has been moved to other projects following a report claiming it had been disbanded.
A video posted by video game outlet Origami on Monday said that Ubisoft was disappointed in sales of the Prince of Persia Metroidvania, and had moved the team at Ubisoft Montpellier to other projects. The team had reportedly tried to pitch a sequel or a more sizeable expansion, but Ubisoft wanted to focus on projects with better sales potential. (The basics were summarized and translated in this ResetEra thread).
In a statement to Digital Trends, The Lost Crown senior producer Abdelhak Elguess confirmed some of the details, including that “most” of the team had been moved onto other projects “that will benefit from their expertise,” and that there wouldn’t be any more content updates, but that Ubisoft isn’t done with Prince of Persia just yet.
“Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is now at the end of its post-launch road map with three free content updates and one DLC that released in September. We are now focusing on making the game available to more players: it was recently launched on Steam, and will be available on Mac by this winter. Most of the team members who worked on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown have shifted to other projects that will benefit from their expertise,” Elguess said.
While Ubisoft couldn’t confirm what projects the producer alluded to, Insider Gaming claims workers were shifted to Beyond Good and Evil 2, a mainline Ghost Recon, and a Rayman remake.
It’s a tumultuous time for the studio. Ubisoft announced it was delaying Assassin’s Creed Shadows from November to February 14, 2025, to give the developers more time to “polish and refine the experience.” This was a sizeable last-minute delay, and in a statement to investors, the company also said that due to the weaker-than-expected sales of Star Wars Outlaws, it had to make some changes to its business model. It announced it was removing the season pass and having games launch on Steam on the day of their release. CEO Yves Guillemot also announced that Ubisoft will be launching a internal review to align the company based on player feedback.
Since then, Star Wars Outlaws has gotten a new road map to focus on bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements. It also dropped the price of the Assassin’s Creed Shadows Collector’s Edition by $50 to make up for the canceled season pass.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.