Ubisoft was working on a modern day Prince of Persia game - before it was canned at the beginning of this console generation.

That's according to ex-Ubisoft (and now Deus Ex) art director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête - who told CVG [via our colleagues at Xbox World 360] that he also worked on a cancelled Assassin's Creed game for PS2 and the original Xbox.

Jacques-Belletête, who's now working at Eidos on the brilliant-looking Deus Ex prequel, revealed: "After [the Assassins' Creed cancellation, Ubisoft] wanted a spin off for Prince of Persia. We had some awesome ideas with that too... in contemporary time."

According to Jacques-Belletête, work had already started on both the next-gen Assassin's Creed and cel-shaded Prince of Persia remake - so the canned modern day PoP didn't necessarily morph into later projects.

"That one had already started at that point... Prince of Persia Zero," he said, referring to the 2008 reboot. "But they wanted really something completely out of the left field. And back then I was known as one of the ones... 'oh this guy can get some pretty cool, weird ideas'.

"So I had this little team, and [our PoP] was actually in the contemporary world. Think a bit Day After Tomorrow, but replace the snow with sand and everything. It was really wicked. But it got cancelled, and then we did all the Far Crys."

Speculation hats on, we imagine this project ended up looking a bit too much like what Assassin's Creed was doing - or will eventually do in later sequels - to justify a release. Still, we'd love to see what the Prince looked like jumping around skyscrapers.

We've e-mailed Ubisoft for comment.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 4&skip=yes