Ubisoft has officially canceled Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake. If you’re feeling a strange mix of disappointment and relief, that’s normal. This project spent so long in limbo that it started to resemble folklore: whispered about, periodically re-sighted, never quite proven real.
But the interesting part isn’t the cancellation. It’s the framing. Ubisoft didn’t present this as a one-off failure. It placed the remake inside a wider company reset: six projects discontinued, seven pushed back for more development time, and an internal reorganization into five new “Creative Houses.”
That’s not a bandage. That’s surgery.
What Ubisoft actually said, minus the corporate poetry
Ubisoft’s reset message boils down to this: the company is reducing the number of projects it funds, applying stricter selection rules, and reorganizing leadership so fewer people can hide behind committees.
In the process, Ubisoft says it discontinued six games that no longer meet the new bar or fit the tightened portfolio. One of those six is the Sands of Time remake, alongside four unannounced titles and one mobile game.
Ubisoft also said seven other titles are getting additional development time to reach quality expectations. That’s the polite version of “we can’t afford another launch that needs an apology tour.”
Why cancel the remake now?
Remakes are supposed to be the safest meal on the menu. A known classic, modern hardware, nostalgia doing half the marketing for you. This one went the other direction.
The Sands of Time remake became a long-running example of three things Ubisoft is trying to extinguish:
- Public drift: when a project is announced too early and then repeatedly slips, it stops being exciting and starts being embarrassing.
- Internal churn: the longer a project runs without a clear finish line, the more it becomes a resource sink you can’t justify to anyone holding a calculator.
- Trust erosion: every “still in development” update eventually sounds like “please stop asking.”
Canceling it now serves a blunt purpose: it demonstrates that the reset has teeth. Companies can announce “focus” forever. The market only believes it when something recognizable gets cut.
What this reveals about Ubisoft’s current condition
Ubisoft is behaving like a company that has run out of patience for its own sprawl.
For years, Ubisoft’s scale was its advantage: many teams, many projects, frequent releases. The modern reality is harsher. AAA budgets are larger, timelines are longer, and the penalty for a shaky launch is immediate and brutal. When the machine misses a few times, it doesn’t just lose money. It loses belief.
This reset is Ubisoft trying to rebuild belief through fewer bets and clearer ownership. The “Creative Houses” structure is meant to concentrate authority and reduce the slow bleed of decisions made by consensus, then blamed on someone else later.
It’s also Ubisoft making a very specific wager: doubling down on big open-world games and long-running live titles, because that’s where it believes scale still pays.
The Creative Houses plan, and why it’s both sensible and risky
Ubisoft’s five Creative Houses are designed to group franchises and genres under tighter leadership, with development and publishing responsibilities closer together. If it works, it should reduce internal gridlock and improve accountability.
The risk is obvious: when your plan centers on a smaller number of pillars, you’re less diversified. The wins are bigger when they land. The misses are louder when they don’t.
Prince of Persia, importantly, still exists as an IP Ubisoft acknowledges in its future-facing structure. The remake is dead. The franchise, at least on paper, is not being buried with it.
What fans should expect next
Here’s the honest forecast: fewer releases in the near term, and heavier pressure on the titles that remain. When a publisher trims its slate, each surviving project carries more responsibility. Marketing gets louder, expectations get sharper, and patience gets shorter.
There are two plausible outcomes.
Best case: Ubisoft delays or cuts weaker projects earlier, ships fewer games, and those games arrive more polished. Players get better releases, and Ubisoft stops setting itself on fire every quarter.
Worst case: Ubisoft becomes too conservative, relies too heavily on the same franchise patterns, and spends the next few years reorganizing around fewer pillars without producing the breakout results that justify the entire exercise.
The part Ubisoft can’t reorganize its way out of
Trust is a release schedule problem.
Statements are easy. New org charts are easy. The hard part is shipping games that feel intentional, finished, and worth full price. Canceling the Sands of Time remake closes a long and awkward chapter, but it does not automatically open a better one.
Ubisoft has told the world it’s serious about focus and quality. Now it has to prove it in the only way that matters: by delivering.
Sources and further reading
- Ubisoft: reset announcement PDF
- Game Developer: breakdown of Ubisoft’s new operating model
- Variety: cancellation and restructuring coverage
- GameSpot: Creative Houses explained
- PCGamesN: summary of cancellations and delays
About the Author
Chad Hughes is a Cross Disciplined tech Founder, most notably for Professor Soni Agentic AI and founding Veribeat Capital.
