Ubisoft is "Anxious" About Making a New Splinter Cell Game

Ubisoft is like evil Nintendo.

Well, okay, Chaotic Neutral Nintendo. Rather than make and publish new games and ideas, they make most of their money with a small stable of reliable and highly-polished IPs, which are turned into “live services” until it’s time to pump out a sequel, at which point the last “live service” is promptly ignored and forgotten, which means it’s not so much a “live service” as it is a normal friggin’ video game with a few extra features and modes stapled on after release.

Anyway, Ubisoft’s Metroid would probably be Splinter Cell, in that it’s a game series people really want them to revisit but they’re extremely hesitant to do so. And talking to IGN, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot explained why they seem scared to approach Sam Fisher.

"When you create a game, you have to make sure you will come with something that will be different enough from what you did before. The last time we did a Splinter Cell, we had lots of pressure from all the fans saying don't change it, don't do this, don't do that, so some of the teams were more anxious to work on the brand."

I’m not sure I believe that. I mean, Ubisoft has shown they’re more than willing to ignore fan feedback and just make another live-service game, just look at Beyond Good and Evil 2, which looks exactly nothing like fans have always wanted and asked for. I don’t see why they couldn’t do the same for Splinter Cell…

…Although I could see why they would hesitate to make a Splinter Cell game when they would inevitably try to make it a live service game, which would mean it would look and/or play similar to The Division 2, which means the two IPs would cannibalize each other’s sales. Now, that’s something I could believe.

But I guess we’ll never know the truth.