The Prince of Persia franchise from Ubisoft has been around for ages, attracting quite a number of fans over the years and even spawning a big-screen movie.
In short, Prince of Persia is widely considered to be one of Ubisoft’s most successful franchises, even if the dashing Prince has lost some of his luster in recent years.
However, while the titles have been well received by critics, mainstream gamers haven’t exactly been lining up to purchase them, at least in sufficient numbers to make the franchise a blockbuster one. So it comes as little surprise that lackluster sales and ebbing popularity has prompted Ubisoft to put the franchise on indefinite hold.
Indeed, all plans from the developer to continue developing new video games in the franchise have been suspended.
“Brand management is a tricky thing… It needs people’s attention a lot. I think it is fair to say that, right now, Prince of Persia is being paused,” Ubisoft Montréal CEO Yannis Mallat confirmed.
“But we said the same thing for some other brands that suddenly popped up because a team is willing to do it.”
Mallat did say that Ubisoft has no intentions at this time of completely abandoning the Prince of Persia franchise. He says that it’s time for the series to take a break while developers brainstorm new ways to refresh the series.
To be sure, it has been a while since we’ve seen a new video game in the Prince of Persia universe, with the last title arriving in 2010 titled Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.
Prince of Persia is a video game franchise originally created by Jordan Mechner and released on the Apple II Computer in 1989. The original Prince of Persia and its immediate sequel were coded as 2D platform games, although the series quickly shifted to a new format following the release of Prince of Persia 3D in 1999.
