Splinter Cell Absence Explained By Ubisoft CEO

A new Splinter Cell has been one of the most highly demanded games from Ubisoft. Though there have been some pretty heavy rumours about one over the past year or so, none of them have materialized, and the last we saw of the franchise was with Splinter Cell: Blacklist in 2013. So why is it that after so long, and in spite of so much demand, we haven’t seen a new Splinter Cell game?

Recently while speaking with IGN, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot spoke about the stealth series, talking about its absence and the reasons behind it. According to Guillemot, Ubisoft’s desires to keep things changing with Splinter Cell games clashed with fans wanting the series to not deviate from its roots too much, which was something that led to the studio becoming less confident to work on the series.

The rise and growth in popularity of franchises such as Assassin’s Creed was also a factor, with Ubisoft developers wanting to work on it instead of Splinter Cell. That said, Guillemot also mentioned that we will be hearing more about Splinter Cell “at some point”- but obviously, did not elaborate on that.

“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,” said Guillemot. “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.

“Now there are some things and some people that are now looking at the brand; taking care of the brand. At one point you will see something but I can’t say more than that. Also, because of Assassin’s Creed and all the other brands taking off, people wanted to work on those brands more. So we have to follow what they like to do.”

Guillemot has spoken along similar lines in the past, suggesting that we hadn’t seen the last of Splinter Cell, while Jade Raymond, formerly of Ubisoft, has also talked about how a new game in the series had been in early pre-production at one point. Let’s just hope we see or hear something more concrete sooner rather than later.