In a company realignment, Ubisoft canceled several games this week, including the long-awaited remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Following this, someone claiming to be a developer on the release gave some insight into the happenings on Reddit.
The user SocramVelmar answered questions on r/PrinceofPersia pertaining to The Sands of Time, discussing how late in the day this decision came and what contributed to uncertainty around the game. It should be noted their identity is unverified due to NDAs, per a response from them asking for receipts, and the session is marked as such.
They state the reason given internally was "restructuring," and the frustration came from it seeming like they might be preparing to ship. "I'm honestly upset because I think it was close to the finish line. I was working remotely and we were told that we had to go back to the office soon, but I didn’t make it out of the chopping block," the person writes.
The Sands of Time suffered from a protracted timeline, first due to the pandemic, as it was announced in 2020, then being restarted from scratch by another team part-way through. Leadership allegedly didn't have much "internal alignment," creating some indecisiveness.
"Design probably had it the worst," the Redditor says in one comment. "They'd be trying to lock down how something should feel or play, while other teams were already moving in slightly different directions. That kind of push and pull leads to rework instead of progress, and over time that friction adds up way more than any leak ever could."
As much is systemic at Ubisoft right now, where remaking a classic action-adventure didn’t fit aspirations of competing harder in the triple-A space. "There's been a big push toward large, open-world experiences for a while, and that makes it harder for tighter, linear games to find oxygen, even when they're well loved," they add. "Sands of Time was always about pacing and flow, and that doesn’t always line up with where priorities seem to be."
This would've been the first large-scale Prince of Persia game since 2010's The Forgotten Sands. In 2024, we got two smaller releases, The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia, both strong, inventive games that suggested Ubisoft was seeing the historic property’s potential once again. Not so much, it seems, and the suggestion of someone else taking up the baton here doesn't get a hopeful response.
"It's technically possible, but there’s a lot more going on than just finding new funding," the purported developer muses. "A new publisher usually means revisiting rights, scope, timelines, and sometimes even reworking parts of the game to fit a different vision."
Five other, unannounced games, and one for mobile, got the axe at the same time as this. Sadly, the sands of time will continue to pour for Prince of Persia, while Ubisoft figures out what the next few years look like.
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