After many, many delays caused rumors to spread of the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake being canceled, Ubisoft has finally confirmed it. In a press release, the company laid out its plans to restructure in order to continue "sustainable growth". It also confirms the cancellation of the game and five others, all of which were unannounced titles, and one of which was a mobile game. This comes alongside delays to seven titles - though which ones they are is still a mystery. We can't say we're feeling too confident about Assassin's Creed Jade coming out this year now…
The company states its aim is to adjust for the shifting AAA market, with founder and CEO Yves Guillemot saying, "the AAA industry has become persistently more selective and competitive with rising development costs and greater challenges in creating brands". This could be a nod to the rise of hugely successful games made by smaller studios, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which famously swept nine categories at the 2025 Game Awards. Either way, Ubisoft has decided that a restructure will help them to weather the storms ahead, which includes cancelling all games that "do not meet the new enhanced quality as well as more selective portfolio prioritization criteria".
Ubisoft's new strategy is to focus on live-service and open-world games primarily. To support specialization of teams into specific genres, it will have five "creative houses". This means there will be one operating base for its major titles like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry; one for live-service games like Brawlhalla; one for its family-friendly and casual games like Just Dance and Uno; one dedicated to its shooters, including The Division; and one specifically for fantasy-based or story-heavy games, like Rayman and other Prince of Persia titles.
The company also states that four new IPs are in development, including the acquisition of March of Giants. Each section of the company will be in charge of their own marketing, financial objectives, and creative vision. We'll see if this means Ubisoft is even more up in our faces with profit-making schemes - Ubisoft Connect has already drawn a lot of criticism from fans, who argue you shouldn't have to sign up for a service to play a game that you own. I can understand that.
Unfortunately, there's potentially more bad news ahead for those of us who are opposed to Generative AI in gaming (which, let's be clear, should be all of us). Ubisoft quietly slips in that alongside the specialization of the creative houses and improvements to technology, it will commit to "accelerated investments behind player-facing Generative AI".
We don't really know what this means in real terms yet, but it's more important than ever that players make noise when they see it used in games. Across Ubisoft and the wider AAA gaming industry, talented game developers are being made redundant, and game studios are closing. It's clear with the abundant success of indie games in recent years that we as players want to see real people behind our games, telling stories for reasons outside of profit-making. Anything that doesn't commit to doing that is in trouble, in my book.