Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, art director at Eidos Montreal on Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and previously working at Ubisoft Montreal has revealed a thing or two about his previous projects to Xbox World 360 (via CVG).
After [the Assassins' Creed cancellation, Ubisoft] wanted a spin off for Prince of Persia. We had some awesome ideas with that too... in contemporary time."
"That one had already started at that point... Prince of Persia Zero. But they wanted really something completely out of the left field. And back then I was known as one of the ones... 'oh this guy can get some pretty cool, weird ideas'.
"So I had this little team, and [our PoP] was actually in the contemporary world. Think a bit Day After Tomorrow, but replace the snow with sand and everything. It was really wicked. But it got cancelled, and then we did all the Far Crys."
This project was canned in favour of the 2008 celshaded Prince of Persia reboot. Weird idea, but perhaps it was for the best day the modern prince of persia never happened. Or what do you think?