One of the developers of the unfortunately canceled project appeared on Reddit and revealed several details about it. The project had been in development for less time than Beyond Good & Evil 2, which is somehow still in the works. We wrote about this yesterday.
The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake was one of six projects Ubisoft recently canceled as part of a major restructuring of the company. The day after the announcement, which promised the inclusion of generative AI for multiple players, Ubisoft‘s shares fell to their lowest level in more than 14 years. As if that weren’t enough, an alleged developer reported on Reddit that the game was close to completion. According to SocramVelmar, the game was almost ready for release when development was suddenly halted due to internal uncertainty and concerns about layoffs. Due to the uncertainty of the situation, some of the team left for studios offering greater stability.
I was a developer for PoP remake.. AMA
byu/SocramVelmar inPrinceOfPersia
According to SocramVelmar, “close” does not always mean “ready.” The question now is not how much time and money has been spent so far, but how much more is needed for the publisher to release the product. Sometimes, management decides that it is cheaper to cut their losses than to release a product they don’t believe in, even if it seems painful and wasteful from the outside. Failure would be worse for Ubisoft than cutting losses, even in the late stages of development. This would affect not only their finances, but also their reputation. Nowadays, post-release support is expected, meaning that even a finished game is not really finished and requires an even greater investment of resources.
According to SocramVelmar, games like The Sands of Time have struggled to find their place within Ubisoft‘s current direction. There has been a strong emphasis on large, open-world experiences for some time now, making it difficult for smaller, linear games to gain traction, even if they are popular. The Sands of Time has always focused on pace and fluidity, which doesn’t always align with current priorities. Although the remake seems to have retained much of the 2003 game, changes were made. One mechanic the developers liked was treating time less like a rewind button and more like something that leaves traces. Instead of merely correcting mistakes, players could briefly interact with echoes of their past actions. For instance, we could start a short time window in which our past selves complete the jump, grab the lever, or distract the enemy while we move forward.
This way, we wouldn’t correct mistakes; we would work with time itself, which seems like an interesting twist on the original. Unfortunately, we won’t get to see it because the developer is concerned that the source code would be leaked, especially by them.
Source: PCGamer
