Five years later, Ubisoft's much-delayed Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake gets the closest thing yet to a release date

It's hard to believe it's been over five years since Ubisoft unveiled its troubled - and much-delayed - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, but we're now one step closer to an actual release date, with Ubisoft's latest financial results narrowing its launch down to "Q4" of its current financial year.
For those that haven't been following the whole Sands of Time remake saga, it was initially unveiled in September 2020, when it was expected to arrive in January 2021. However, the less-than-positive response to its announcement trailer led Ubisoft to make the first of what would be many delays. Three years later, the embattled project was shifted from Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai to Ubisoft Montreal, where it was seemingly rebooted from scratch, and last year brought some promising updates. We learned the remake was "deep" in development, and that it was definitely still targeting a 2026 release.
Which brings us to Ubisoft's latest (and briefly delayed) earnings report, featuring a couple of updates for the company's release slate. Beyond Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's imminent From the Ashes expansion (due 19th December), the publisher has four titles scheduled to release in the fourth quarter of its current 2025-2026 financial year. Those games are Rainbow Six Mobile, The Division Resurgence, an unnamed title (widely believed to be the heavily rumoured Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake), and, yes, the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake.
All of which is to say that, five years after its original announcement, the Sands of Time remake has the closest thing to a release date yet. Barring any further delays, it'll be launching sometime between the 1st January and 31st March next year. That, then, isn't too far off, but we've yet to see a single second of footage since development switched to Ubisoft Montreal. Could the publisher be holding back for a big end-of-year reveal during December's Game Awards? Time will tell, no pun intended, but hopefully the big unveiling will be more exciting than the 30 seconds of candle we got last year.
In other Ubisoft news, CEO Yves Guillemot has announced the company is going all-in on its use of controversial generative AI technology, calling it as big a "revolution" for games as the shift from 2D to 3D. The company was, of course, recently caught slipping AI-generated artwork into Anno 117: Pax Romana. The results were a mess, featuring characters with disfigured or out-of-scale facial features, missing limbs, and strange set-dressing - leading the publisher to insist the artwork was only intended to be used as a placeholder, before replacing it with touched-up alternatives.