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Alongside a slate of other projects at Ubisoft.
"Hello everyone and welcome back to another GRTV News. Today we're going to be talking about the big news story that broke at the end of yesterday, this big report from, or actually more of a press release from Ubisoft, that revealed the fate of a game that many of us have been questioning about for a long time in the Prince of Persia remake, and then it also revealed the fate of a bunch of other games that we actually don't know about. But it wasn't just that, it was this restructuring process that shows that Ubisoft is going to look a little bit different in the future, and long story short it wasn't. It was another time where you come away from it going, come on Ubisoft, another little bit of a disappointing turn of events from this company, so let's have a look. So yeah, no it wasn't around the corner, Ubisoft cancels Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time remake and five more games."
"The publisher's major organisational, operational and portfolio reset means aggressive cost reduction and kills three TBA new IPs. As always with rumours, one has to take them with a pinch of salt or keep in mind that they sometimes are from another point in development.
It is what may have happened to Prince of Persia the Sands of Time remake, which some sources claim was around the corner and is now officially dead. The announcement comes from the press release the company has shared a few moments ago which also confirms the cancellation of over five other projects. Specifically, Ubisoft states that it has discontinued six games, and then named Prince of Persia the Sands of Time remake directly, alongside four unannounced titles, three new IPs and one mobile game. For fans relief this should have been that the never-ending development of Beyond Good and Evil 2 will continue, but now a massive entertainment confirmed the other day that The Division 3 also goes ahead despite its creative head departure. Will the also rumoured new Rayman be affected?
The letter explains that Ubisoft is reorganising into five genre-focused creative houses, each combining development and publishing with full creative and financial ownership. The goal is faster decision-making, stronger accountability and a more gamer-centric structure. Ubisoft also wants to narrow its content pipeline to concentrate on open-world adventures and GARs. While at the same time implementing an aggressive cost reduction policy, how this restructuring impacts potential layoffs is also yet to be confirmed. The Prince of Persia remake was announced back in 2020, then went radio silent after heavy criticism until it got last year's teaser trailer below, scheduling for a 2026 release that will never happen."
"But the point is, he's been very vocal about this game and he recently followed up on this press release that Ubisoft put out saying that he did hear that the game was delayed and that it was going to move away from its January 16th launch to instead come out in March, just to give the team a little bit of extra time to polish. But he also then talked about how Ubisoft developers had no idea that these things were happening and that they heard about these cancellations and this restructuring through different media reports. So another situation where for some reason, I don't know why they do this, where video game developers do not even give their employees an hour's notice of what's happening. They just share the information, let everyone else just mop up the mess that they make. As for the games that have been canned, aside from Prince of Persia, we really don't know. We can only speculate. Again, Rayman, maybe. Ubisoft didn't really treat Prince of Persia The Lost Crown very well, despite the fact that it did perform quite well in the sales sense with all the different platforms it came out on. And it's that the developer or merge developer that made that game that was handling the new Rayman title. So will that be canned? It's hard to say. They did shut down two studios. One was Stockholm. The other one was, I can't remember actually where the other one was. It wasn't the Rayman studio or the Prince of Persia Lost Crown studio. But it could be this Rayman game that's been canned. Otherwise, you know, you look at recent events and Red Links recently went through a restructuring of its own and had layoffs. So you have to look at it and say, maybe there's a trials that got canned. It's difficult to say. Again, as Dav puts in the news piece, there's no way of knowing what has been canned until until Ubisoft specifically tells us or developers come out and say that the project they've been working on has been canned. What we do know, though, is they specifically said it's unannounced stuff. So despite the fact that Beyond Good and Evil 2 was announced nearly 20 years ago now, that game is still in development for some reason. Is it real? Is it just used as some sort of tax haven or something? Who knows? But I'm absolutely convinced that we will never see Beyond Good and Evil 2. So I'm not too sure what's going on there. And likewise, a bunch of the other things that have been announced and we haven't really seen them. Technically, they can't be cancelled because that's not what this press release states. So we're talking the Division 3, Assassin's Creed codename Hexay, the Black Flag remake, like lots of different things here. So I don't know, we'll pick up the pieces when we know more. But it's quite a big change, this. And it once again goes to prove that just as Ubisoft starts doing something a little bit positive, it brings you back down to earth and makes you realise that this company is questionably wrong, should we say."
"But again, as we know more, we'll keep you posted. But otherwise, that's all the time I have. I'll be back now tomorrow for the next and final GRTV News from me this week. And until then, I hope you enjoy the rest of your Thursday. And for all who celebrate, happy Forza Fable Day.
Take care, everyone."
