There was a time, not so long ago, that The Prince of Persia was considered to be one of the hottest franchises available. After being rebooted in 2003 the action series spawned ten follow-up titles across multiple platforms, but recently the Prince has been eclipsed by other Ubisoft titles, most notably by Assassin’s Creed. Now in a recent interview with IGN, Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat went on record stating, “I think it is fair to say that, right now, Prince of Persia is being paused.”
It has been three years since the last Prince of Persia game, The Forgotten Sands. It received mostly middle-of-the-road reviews; its short gameplay and overly simplistic combat (not something that the franchise was renowned for) led many to suspect that the series might be getting stale.
“Brand management is a tricky thing,” Mallat stated. “It needs people’s attention a lot.”
The CEO did, however, state the series would remain part of the company’s portfolio - meaning Ubisoft isn’t going to sell it off. “Prince of Persia is part of Ubisoft’s portfolio. As a matter of fact, we sometimes iterate on franchises, and sometimes we give them time to breathe and time to grow, or time to rest. Prince of Persia is as important as any other franchise for Ubisoft.”
This is probably for the best. After the eye watering $200 million-dollar flop that was the film adaptation of Prince of Persia, the series could probably do with a breather. No doubt, however, fans of Prince of Persia won’t be happy waiting in the dark about when they might expect (if at all) another game in the franchise.
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