Nice write up. It depends on you hardware too (if its strong enough). Some games might be best played on Xbox, so it makes sense to try Xemu. I personally prefer Dolphin and PS2, because they are integrated into RetroArch as cores (in Linux). At least he is looking for the best graphics, and that should be the Xbox versions. But I didn’t try the Prince of Persia games yet.
I can’t tell you which version is the best for you (and your hardware). The first thing I would lookup if the particular version for the emulator is working well (have in mind, the reports are not always up to date): Dolphin for GameCube, PCSX2 for Playstation 2 and Xemu for Xbox.
But those points are not the reason this game flopped. Lot of games have micro transactions and are popular. Other games require additional account (and even launcher in some cases) and are still popular. While these arguments are in fact negative, they are not the reason the game failed. If Sony comes to this conclusion too, then they will not learn anything from it. So I hope they analyze it better.
In example the initial trailer reveal wasn’t good. Then the characters and the universe it is in isn’t very interesting, huge problem for a hero shooter. Sony completely ignored the critics from beta test phase. The marketing in general was terrible. Game is not playable on Linux either, which would have gave them some marketing push too. And the timing of the launch day was badly chosen too lot of people and news was focusing on Wukong and Deadlock.
There are lot of reasons that are well orchestrated together to fail the game. It’s not as simple as the list you gave (in my opinion). Games with worse industry standards get more popular.
The gameplay doesn’t look bad to me, I am interested into it. It has way bigger problems, like the unpopular character styles and looks. But what do you mean by “abusive industry practices”? I like the idea of paying upfront and getting the whole game, way better than a Free to play model to me. But I guess that approach isn’t working in today’s world.
Price plays a role too, only 17,55 Euros for Squirrel here and Concord 40 Euros, plus 20 for Deluxe.
I was interested into Concord, not gonna lie. But even if I wanted to buy and play the game, accept their terms of usage and create a Sony account, its not playable on Linux. And to be honest, I’m thankful for not being able to waste my money and time.
But they have the NES / Famicom version of Tetris, which is owned by Nintendo too. Unless they mean the infamous Tengen / Atari version on NES (some say its better, but there were legal trouble because of Nintendo).