Summary
The remake ofPrince of Persia: The Sands of Timehas hit an “important internal milestone,” Ubisoft has revealed. Its encouraging announcement stands in stark contrast to thedisappointing update on thePrince of Persia: The Sands of Timeremakethat the company shared back in May, suggesting that the project was still in pre-production.
First revealed in 2020, the remake of the iconicPrince of Persiareboot was initially met with backlash from the fandom due to its underwhelming visuals. The criticism gained so much traction that the project was hit with an indefinite delay while Ubisoft reassessed its merits. ThePrince of Persia: The Sands of Timeremake ended up swapping developerstwo years later, having been reassigned from Ubisoft’s India-based studios in Pune and Mumbai to Ubisoft Montreal.
While not much has been revealed about the remake ever since, Ubisoft just confirmed that the game has reached a major internal milestone. Taking to X, formerly Twitter, the officialPrince of Persiaaccount said that the development on the remake hence continues to progress. The update itself was shared on the 20th anniversary ofPrince of Persia: The Sands of Time’s European release.
As for what this internal milestone might be referring to, it is possible thatThe Sands of Timeremake has finally started active production. Seeing how its producer, Jean-Francois Naud, revealed that the project was still “in conception” back in May, no other “important” milestones appear to be feasible for the studio to reach just six months later. The wording of the 2022 developer switch announcement initially suggested that Ubisoft Montreal wouldn’t return to the drawing board, but attempt to build on what its companies in Pune and Mumbai had already achieved by that point. However, Naud’s subsequent update clearly indicated that the development eventually had to be restarted from scratch.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake Is Still Likely Years Away From Release
Assuming the game is now in active production, the next major milestone would be to have it playable from start to finish. From there, the developers would simultaneously turn to refining the experience and working on replacing placeholder assets with finished products. For reference, asset creation has historically been the biggest bottleneck in game development. And given the initialfan complaints aboutThe Sands of Timeremake’s graphics, it’s unlikely that Ubisoft Montreal decided to reuse much of the project’s original assets.
Beyond that, testing and bug fixing also tend to be massive time sinks in AAA game development. The remake is hence still likely years away from hitting the market. And while Ubisoft remains adamant to see this project through, the difficulties that it already faced in doing so ostensibly contributed to its decisionnot to remake any morePrince of Persiagamesin the foreseeable future.
Prince of Persia
The Prince of Persia franchise is a long-running series that began in 1989 with the first-ever cinematic platformer. The series has dabbled in many genres, though the games are predominantly a blend of action-adventure and platforming.The original Prince of Persia isn’t the series' only iconic game, as 2003’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is still considered one of the best action-adventure games of all time.
