Ubisoft had a strong first half of the year, with sales up 32 percent and confidence that the targets for the full-year 2008-09 will be met. The same confidence also extends to the Prince of Persia installment, which Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot believes will be praised by critics.

Guillemot said: “Already, there’s a number of good marks. We have 8s, some 9s and one 10. But we’re still waiting for a lot of marks to come. So altogether, at the moment [scores are around] high 8s. We hope it can be in the 9s, but [we expect] it to be 8.5 and 9.2 or 3.”

The game, which is scheduled to be launched within less than a week, is expected to help the company achieve the goal of €500 million for the third fiscal quarter and €1,050 million for full-year 2008-09. For now, things appear to be going well for Ubisoft, with Far Cry 2 doing well in Europe, much better than in North America.

The upcoming Prince of Persia: The Fallen King is part of a longer storyline, and is scheduled for release at the beginning of December for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The storyline takes gamers into the Persian mythology, where the Prince gets caught in an epic battle between the God of Light, Ormazd, and his brother Ahriman, the God of Darkness. Elika will join him in his adventures as his ‘deadly’ companion.

The game was initially confirmed in May this year, when Ubisoft talked about a release in Q4 and a few details about the gameplay and the storyline. Later in September, Ubisoft accounted December 2 as a release date.