Prince of Persia may be "paused", but Ubisoft's secret "Osiris" project looks sweet

Ubisoft Montreal CEO Yannis Mallat has revealed that the Prince of Persia series is on hold till the publisher works out what to do with it. Fortunately, Ubisoft has something else in the can. Meet "Osiris", an unannounced game set in mythical times featuring a bald dude with a big stick.

"Brand management is a tricky thing," Mallat told IGN. "It needs people's attention a lot. I think it is fair to say that, right now, Prince of Persia is being paused. But we said the same thing for some other brands that suddenly popped up because a team is willing to do it."

"I'm not scared at all for Prince of Persia fans," he went on. "We'll find something to entertain them with in the future. 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. As soon as we have something to show, we will."

I waxed lyrical about gaming's best-known monarch in a recent feature. The "Osiris" game doesn't seem quite as magical, making allowances for the roughness of the leaked footage, but any game which gets to grips with the Kingdom of the Nile gets a thumbs-up from me. Lots of pleasantly ornate godlings to mess around with, there.

This appears to be the same project Ubisoft allegedly demoed"behind closed doors" at E3 last year, reported to be a Prince of Persia reboot. According to that particular rumour, the game will launch this year.

Update - Alas! Seems the project is "no longer moving forward". Thanks, Polygon.