In the wake of a massive upheaval at Ubisoft that has seen several game cancellations, including the canceled long-in-development Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake, along with restructuring of its core franchises and layoffs, the future of Watch Dogs, a franchise once seen as a potential future pillar of the company, is seemingly in limbo.
During a recent episode of the Insider Gaming podcast, in which Ubisoft's future prospects were discussed at length, Tom Henderson stated that after the release of Watch Dogs Legion, the team behind him moved on to another project unrelated to Watch Dogs and was eventually canceled.
As far as I know at this point, the Watch Dogs IP is completely dead.
Immediately following Henderson's declaration that Watch Dogs as an IP is dead, another notable insider, shinobi602, took to ResetEra to offer his own take on the situation.
“Not really,” they wrote in response to Henderson's podcast clips.
When asked if they were referring to the Watch Dogs video games or a movie project, shinobi602 replied, “I'm not talking about the movie.”
The confusion over Watch Dogs didn't stop there, as in a Reddit thread, Henderson believed shinobi602 was referring to the “Watch Dogs Coterie,” a project that Henderson says “is nothing but people who like the franchise at the moment, concept art, basic R&D, etc.”
Ideas like these are always discussed because of the passion the teams have, Henderson said, but until he gets the green light, they're just ideas.
“If he doesn't mean the Coterie, then I have no idea what he's talking about,” Henderson added.
Watch Dogs could be the modern Assassin's Creed we've all wanted
Watch Dogs might have been the perfect way to bring combat to Abstergo, but Ubisoft kept dancing around the Assassin's Creed elephant in the room.
Naturally, it didn't end there, as shinobi602 took a final stand on what he believes about Watch Dogs, writing to Henderson on ResetEra: “That's not what I'm talking about, but that's the last thing I'll say about it.”
Which means that if you've stuck around until this point, then Watch Dogs is either dead and just an IP that has a lot of passion around it, or it's actually alive and actively being worked on.
With only three games, Watch Dogs is quickly reaching cult classic status
Originally released in 2014, Watch Dogs was designed to not only be another big Ubisoft franchise, but also one of the other big pillars of gaming. Unfortunately, its debut was nowhere near as well-received or 1:1 as its first reveal trailers placed it.
It was followed in 2016 by the slightly better-received sequel Watch Dogs 2, closer to the jump between Assassin's Creed and Assassin's Creed 2. The franchise then took a hiatus until 2020, when Watch Dogs Legion was released, a title that introduced an ambitious title in terms of a new franchise, but fell short.
We haven't had a new game since then, but a movie directed by Mathieu Turi was completed in 2024, although no release date has been set.
- Released
-
May 26, 2014
- ESRB
-
M for Mature Blood // Blood, game experience may change while playing online, intense violence, nudity, strong language, strong sexual content, drug and alcohol use
- Developers
-
Ubisoft Montreal
- Engine
-
hawk
- Multiplayer
-
Online multiplayer
If Ubisoft can't remake the PS2 game, how can we trust them to do anything?
The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake has officially been canceled.
