Ubisoft

Lore & Background

The Prince of Persia franchise entered a long dormancy after the mid-1990s, its name reduced to a footnote in gaming history. Ubisoft, then a mid-sized European publisher still building its identity beyond the Rayman and Beyond Good & Evil titles, saw in the dormant IP an opportunity to define its own flagship action-adventure property. The decision to entrust the revival to its Paris studio—and to rebuild the Prince not as a side-scrolling puzzle solver but as a fluid, parkour-driven hero—proved transformative. The Sands of Time trilogy (2003–2005) established a visual and mechanical language that would echo through Ubisoft's entire output for years.

The 2008 reboot, developed by Ubisoft Montreal, pushed the Prince into a more grounded, cinematic space, while The Forgotten Sands (2010) experimented with co-op and a younger, more comic-book-styled protagonist. Neither recaptured the magic of the Sands trilogy, and the franchise lapsed again. Yet Ubisoft never let the rights lapse entirely. The 2023 release of The Lost Crown, also from Montreal, represented a deliberate return to the 2-D, level-based roots of the original, signaling that the publisher still regarded the Prince as a living, evolving property rather than a museum piece.

Across three decades, Ubisoft's relationship with the Prince has been one of reinvention: each era redefined what the character could be, what the gameplay could feel like, and what the world of Persia could look like. The franchise's identity is, in many ways, a mirror of Ubisoft's own creative ambitions.

In Their Own Story

The studio lights hummed low on a Tuesday evening in Paris. A developer set down her stylus, leaned back, and watched the Prince on her monitor—mid-leap, sand trailing behind him like a comet's tail. He was not the stiff, blocky figure from 1989. He was not the armored, cinematic warrior of 2008. He was something new: a silhouette cut from twilight, moving through a temple that breathed. She saved the file, closed her laptop, and walked out into the Montreuil rain. Somewhere in the building, a producer was already arguing about the next level's clock. The Prince, for tonight, was done. He would wait in the code until morning, patient as the sands he was made to command.

Reader's Guide

Ubisoft's first major Prince of Persia project, the Sands of Time trilogy (2003–2005), was developed by its Paris studio and represented a full creative reset. The team rebuilt the Prince from the ground up—new animation system, new combat, a narrative driven by the magical hourglass. Critics and players responded with rare enthusiasm, and the trilogy became a defining title for Ubisoft's brand identity in the mid-2000s.

The 2008 reboot shifted development to Ubisoft Montreal and adopted a more cinematic, open-encounter structure. It was a bold departure, and while it found an audience, it divided longtime fans who missed the puzzle-driven level design. The Forgotten Sands sequel (2010) doubled down on a younger, more stylized Prince and added co-op, but the franchise's momentum stalled after that entry.

A long silence followed. Then, in 2023, Ubisoft Montreal delivered The Lost Crown, a 2-D metroidvania that explicitly referenced the 1989 original's level-based structure. The reception was warm and nostalgic, and it reaffirmed Ubisoft's commitment to the franchise as an ongoing creative project rather than a one-off revival. For fans, the arc from Sands of Time to The Lost Crown reads as a publisher learning, over twenty years, how to honor a legacy without being trapped by it.

Did You Know?

• The Sands of Time trilogy was developed by Ubisoft's Paris studio, while the 2008 reboot, Forgotten Sands, and The Lost Crown were all handled by Ubisoft Montreal—two different cities, two different design philosophies,
• Before Ubisoft revived the franchise in 2003, Prince of Persia had been dormant for roughly a decade, its last major entry dating to the mid-1990s.
• The Lost Crown (2023) was a deliberate return to 2-D, level-based gameplay, echoing the structural DNA of the original 1989 game while using modern development tools.
• Ubisoft was founded by three brothers—Yves, Christian, and Jean-Claude Guillemot—in 1986, and the company grew from a small French outfit into one of the world's largest game publishers.