Cancelled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake claimed to have been 'close to the finish line'

Ubisoft's remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was one of six projects recently cancelled as part of a "major reset" of the company's internal structure. One day after the announcement, which included a promise that more "player-facing generative AI" was on the cards, Ubisoft shares dropped to their lowest value in more than 14 years.

Rubbing some salt in the wound, Reddit posts claiming to come from a developer who worked on the project say that "it was close to the finish line." The redditor, posting under the name SocramVelmar, wrote "Although the game was close to release, development stopped suddenly due to internal uncertainty and concerns around layoffs. With things unclear, some of the team moved on to other studios that offered more stability."

If it was close to completion, you may be wondering, why not put in a little more effort to get it out the door? As SocramVelmar explained, "Because 'close' doesn't always mean 'ready.' At that point the question isn't how much time or money was already spent, it's how much more it would take to ship something the publisher is willing to stand behind. Sometimes leadership decides stopping the bleeding is cheaper than releasing something they're not confident in, even if it hurts and feels wasteful from the outside."

Basically, a failure's going to be worse for Ubisoft than cutting its losses even late in the production. Not just financially, but reputationally—and nowadays there's an expectation of post-launch support that means even a "finished" game isn't really finished, resulting in an even greater investment of resources.

SocramVelmar also says games like The Sands of Time struggled to find a place in Ubisoft's current direction. "There's been a big push toward large, open-world experiences for a while," they wrote, "and that makes it harder for tighter, linear games to find oxygen, even when they’re well loved. Sands of Time was always about pacing and flow, and that doesn't always line up with where priorities seem to be."

While the remake sounds like it would have preserved a decent amount of the 2003 game, there would also have been changes. "One mechanic we really liked was treating time less like a rewind button and more like something that leaves a trace. Instead of just undoing mistakes, you could briefly interact with echoes of your past actions. For example, you'd trigger a short time window where a past version of you finishes a jump, holds a lever, or distracts an enemy while you move forward."

As SocramVelmar describes it, "you weren't fixing errors, you were cooperating with time itself." Which sounds like an intriguing twist on the original. Shame we won't get to see it. "Doubt there will be any leaked source code," SocramVelmar says, "at least not from me."