Ubisoft: We Lost Prince Of Persia Fans To God Of War

I've never really thought about this but before GOW came out I loved POP, Ubi's right.

Ubisoft: We Lost Prince Of Persia Fans To God Of War

Personally, I've never really compared the two franchises - I know they're technically in the same genre, but I figure both are great in their own ways - but Ubisoft believes SCEA's stellar God of War series has stolen away some Prince of Persia fans.

This according to what Ubisoft animation director Jan-Erik Sjovall told CVG; he says that based on gamer surveys, the team wanted to do two things: they wanted to bring back fans from Sands of Time that have gravitated towards GoW and at the same time, drag in all new fans. It's a tall order for Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, which is technically a sequel to Sands of Time. Said Sjovall:

"When we make questionnaires and we ask, 'what did you play in the past?' The answer's 'Prince of Persia'. 'What do you play now?' 'God of War'. 'Would you play Prince of Persia again?' 'No, it's not hard enough.' So the idea [with Forgotten Sands] was clearly that we'd try to bring our old audience back, but also we're winning a new audience."

When asked what feature of GoW seemed to tempt players away from PoP, Sjovall said he believed it's "partially the animations;" specifically those nasty finishing moves for which Kratos is well known. Basically, he's saying the gore is what has enticed the fans and because there's little blood and gore in any PoP, that has had an adverse effect on its popularity. Okay, that's a little sad, but such is the way, I suppose. Added Sjovall:

"A lot of people ask, 'will you have gore in the game?' It'd fairly interesting. We want to have interesting fight sequences in there but not indulge in the violence like God of War does. We want to keep it interesting so the acrobatics, the story and the whole look are all supporting each other and people go, 'yeah, I want to play that game'."

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is due out in May. And for the record, for those who are unfamiliar, PoP should include more puzzles and acrobatic platforming than any GoW.

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Loved the last PoP. Very beautiful game. Want a sequel to that instead of Forgotten Sands.

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Warriorboy1990

Ubisoft, man, you've been off your game lately and you're trying to get back on your feet again, but you can't blame another franchise for not doing well with your own.

Possible damage control coming in early?

God of War may have taken some but they could put more emphasis on the last PoP game that came out. I loved Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and Two Thrones. The newest one went completely in the wrong direction and was very unenjoyable

Interesting, I've Never been a fan of Prince of Persia...I'm usually the person who flings the controller across the room after failing to make the same jump for the sixth time :P

I really don't think violence is the main reason PoP lost out to God Of War to be completely honest. God of War is just more fun to play.

[QUOTE="Warriorboy1990"]

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Y2Jfan23

i personally thing they should cut the combat to minimum and focus more on acrobatics i actually thought the last PoP was great, ill play that over god of war 1 any time (because of those ridiculously timed puzzles in god of war)funsohng

You're in the minority...concerning the last PoP title. The game sort of plays itself and you're doing little more than running from place to place and fighting a handful of enemies.

[QUOTE="funsohng"]i personally thing they should cut the combat to minimum and focus more on acrobatics i actually thought the last PoP was great, ill play that over god of war 1 any time (because of those ridiculously timed puzzles in god of war)Gxgear

You're in the minority...concerning the last PoP title. The game sort of plays itself and you're doing little more than running from place to place and fighting a handful of enemies.

Loved the last PoP. Very beautiful game. Want a sequel to that instead of Forgotten Sands.

cloudff7tm

Loved the last PoP. Very beautiful game. Want a sequel to that instead of Forgotten Sands.

cloudff7tm

Halo fans have no problems buying Call of Duty, I think if Ubi wants to sell more, they need to stop cranking out sequels, and polish up what they got.

Metacritic tells a much different story quality wise comparing POP to GOW. People know when a game is better or not, bottomline. People know if they are going to buy, rent, or avoid, bottomline.

Can you iimagine if Bungie said, "We lost Halo fans to COD". The only blame would be Bungie, but that's not going to happen.

I realize they aren't cranking POP out like last gen, but for a while there it was getting nuts.

People will gladly buy both if they love both.

[QUOTE="Gxgear"]

[QUOTE="funsohng"]i personally thing they should cut the combat to minimum and focus more on acrobatics i actually thought the last PoP was great, ill play that over god of war 1 any time (because of those ridiculously timed puzzles in god of war)funsohng

You're in the minority...concerning the last PoP title. The game sort of plays itself and you're doing little more than running from place to place and fighting a handful of enemies.

they couldn't be more wrong but here's a couple things I'd like to add.

It's not the gore that people choose GoW > PoP, it's the very minimal combat in the last PoP game and the immortality that they introduced (never being able to die). It took away the challenge and completely casualized the title, and long time fans didn't like these game mechanics.

You don't lose fans to other franchises, you just lose fans. I.E. people didn't like what the heard about the last PoP game, they're not going to buy it. That doesn't increase the frequency of people who bought God of War. Just as someone who always enjoyed PoP who bought God of War. They're not going to avoid buying the next PoP game because they bought GoW.

God of War sells because it does what the fans want/ask for, not because it's gorier than every title in the genre. If they took out the ability to die in God of War, or minimalized the amount of combat, the sales figures would probably hurt.

Prince of Persia saw a big drop in sales, not because the lack of gore, but because it strayed away from the core mechanics/content of the previous installments and many long time fans didn't agree with these changes.

it's stupid in the first place to compare an adventure/platformer at heart with some action thrown in, to a game that is pure action, with minimal platforming and adventuring.

When is ubisoft actually going to listen to their fans? it'd make more sense to listen to the fans and hear about the issue from them, rather than coming up with possible solutions to why the last game lost it's popularity.

1. It's not the gore which turned people off, it's the crappy game mechanics
2. It's not GoW's fault, only the developers at ubisoft

for the record, I really enjoyed the last PoP game, and I'm excited for the new one as well.

Personally, I've never really compared the two franchises - I know they're technically in the same genre, but I figure both are great in their own ways

Blazerdt47

That's pretty much where I stand too. To be frank I actually preffer Sands of Time and perhaps one of its sequels over the God of War franchise(bear in mind that I haven't played the 3rd one yet.) I do think that the God of War series is a lot more polished though.

The above said, I too was dissapointed by their new PoP. I liked the graphics, the story was... ok and so was the design of the levels. The combat wasn't bad either, and I actually liked this new direction they were going for in centering less on the combat.

My biggest gripe with the game was the platforming, and that was more than reason enough for the game to be ruined for me. What I mean by this is that while the others featured what I usually like to call: Targetting platforming, where you're not exactly in ultimate control when platforming from point A to B(unlike the Mario series for instance, more like Tomb Raider) it was still too automatic for my taste. Hell there were times when I could see myself climbing a tower, and a half of a minute or so of platforming required very little comands from me or control. Sure seeing the prince do all of those tricks is very cool, but taking very little part in what he is doing is another thing alltogether.

The above was my main gripe with the game period, outside of that I didn't mind much about the difficulty that many gamers felt was too easy, but in that department I still preffer the other games in the series: The platforming was much better, so was the design of the levels and some of the powers that were well implemented with the platforming. I still find that the combat in the new one is a good direction, but there were other features in the other games that I liked too, like, for instance, the stealth kills in the Two Thrones.

Wtf? How can God of War "steal" fans away? Both plays so differently and fans of PoP can also be fans of GoW. People arent going to stop buying PoPgames all of a sudden just because GoW turned out amazing.Video games arent like McDonalds and Burger King,games dont even compete with each other much unless they are released at around the same time, in fact, they could even complement one another.

And Ubisoft better not start implementing GoW mechanics into PoP just to appeal to these "fans". If i want GoW i will play GoW.

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Warriorboy1990

Took the words right out of my mouth.

they lost me after warrior within, i love how gory that game was, when i saw there was no gore on the next one, i could bring myself to play it. I played the one for next gen and it was garbage

I was disappointed because Ubisoft decided to forget the new Prince and instead returned to the old one. The old trilogy was great but I think the story of the new Prince and Elika must continue and also they should continue with that beautiful art direction; in my opinion, PoP 2008 is one of the most beautiful games in this generation.Miroku32

I agree. That's actually one of the reasons why I'm not as interested in this one. The Sands of Time trilogy is over, why keep milking that point in the storyline of the PoP series? I have no interest whatsoever in knowing what happened to the Prince between whatever games... What the new Prince of Persia had that was negative of it was not the overall direction, but some design choices that imo didn't turn out so well. This could be fixed.

Again I agree. The moment I saw images of the last PoP game I would be lying if I said that it didn't arouse more of my interest than this new one. I was actually curious to see how the game would turn out, this one? At this point not so much...

I want a sequel to the 2008 PoP instead of this, even though it does look nice, I much prefer what they did with the other game.

The interaction between Elika and the Prince was very well done, seeing how they interact with each other from the start to the end was brilliant. The visual design was also better and it was more focused on platforming which I liked. Even though some might complain it feels to automatic, I actually like that everything 'clicked' - Was definitely my favourite game of 2008, above others.

The last PoP is good, very interesting platforming machenics and good ending. The new PoP is just another assassin's creed without those assassin's technique...

Honestly, story wise, Assassin's Creed is a lot better than PoP. I doubt new PoP would be successful like AC.

i love the ast gen prince of persia.

But hate the largest one :evil:

So....people didn't buy Prince of Persia in 2008 because they were much more fascinated with the gore that was going to be in a 2010 game. Whatever you say Ubisoft.

I find that this was very cowardly on their part. I'm starting to see a relation between the situation of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. I hate it when developers do this. I still have to think about what kind consumers some of these developers think we all are, because I have to agree with Lionheart08. Just the other day I was talking about companies like Bioware selling their games with phrases such as "dark fantasy" and stating that this was the state of the industry right now. I actually thought that perhaps I was being too dramatic about it, but examples like these unfortunately say to an extent that it's true.

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Warriorboy1990

I actually really enjoyed the last PoP game, they were just stupid by calling it a Prince of Persia. It should have been a brand new IP, but instead they alienated an entire fan base by trying to change everything they loved about the franchise.

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Warriorboy1990

Well all I can say is that I'm happy they are improving over its true antecessor and not doing the casual borefest that the last PoP was.

Just had a thought: What if the new Legend of Zelda had an artstyle similar to that of Prince of Persia 2008? That would be amazing. o_O

As was stated earlier in this thread, Prince of Persia was released in 2008 and God of War III was released in 2010. If you say so Ubisoft. =P

Actually they lost their Prince of Persia fans from their last game. That game sucked, imo. I'm looking forward to the new game though, being a huge God of War fan as well.

Warriorboy1990

hmm, i own sands of time, warrior within, and the two thrones.....but no GOW game on my ps2. it was the platforming and puzzles of pop that made me stick with the franchise. the 2008 prince of persia was the worst pop game. it shouldnt be called pop because it was a totally new game. i hope they never continue the series. the only thing i liked about it was the theme of the game. the art style is simply my fav among any other game. so beutifull and magical. if they can put those graphics with the true pop gameplay then i will be sooo happy.