One of the top most-rated franchises ever to come out of Ubisoft is Splinter Cell. Despite the commercial failure of their latest game, Splinter Cell: Blacklist in 2013, the franchise still holds dear to most of us and we would love a new Splinter Cell game.
The Splinter Cell Franchise started back in 2002 when it debuted on a multitude of platforms including PC, Xbox, and PS2. The game did very well in terms of sales and it became a fan-favorite title of its time. It also set the pace for a new franchise for Ubisoft to work on.
After the success of the first title, Ubisoft continued with the franchise with Pandora Tomorrow that came out in 2004. The next title in the series was Chaos Theory followed by Essentials which was the first Splinter Cell title for the PSP system.
The next titles in the Splinter Cell franchise were Double Agent, which came out in 2006, Conviction in 2010 and the last one was Blacklist in 2013. There are some games that potentially do badly in sales but then there are games, which totally ruin a franchise to the point that developers lose their interest in it.
Blacklist turned out to be such a game that totally killed the Splinter Cell franchise. Despite receiving decent reviews overall and doing pretty well in the initial days, it could not retain its sale figures for a long time and turned out to be a commercial failure for Ubisoft. At the end, it could not even meet the sales expectations.
Now here we are in 2018, 5 years after the launch of the last title of this franchise and we are patiently waiting for any sorts of announcements of a new Splinter Cell game. At last year’s E3, CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot stated when asked about the future of Splinter Cell series:
“I can’t say much about that but, for sure; all the Clancy games are taken care of. It’s just we have quite a lot on our plate at the moment. All the Clancy games are really coming along, so we are not forgetting Splinter Cell.”
Other Ubisoft titles such as The Division, Rainbow Six, and Ghost Recon are still attracting a lot of players whether new or returning, which shows that Ubisoft is currently happy with the current line-up of their games.
Despite Ubisoft being busy with other franchises such as Assassins Creed, The Crew, Ghost Recon, and Rainbow series, Yves stated that they have not forgotten about Splinter Cell so this gives us hope that a Splinter Cell title will come in the near future.
We currently do not know if Ubisoft wants to keep the same stealth formula for the future titles of Splinter Cell because their main stealth title is now Assassins Creed which has been doing well over the long course of time it has been around.
With six stealth titles under its belt, Splinter Cell could be looking at a new formula for the future titles, as the last title did not do well in its genre. Ubisoft needs to come back with a new concept and direction if they want to make it a long-running franchise just like other titles of Ubisoft.
At E3 2017, Ubisoft displayed Beyond Good and Evil 2, which is the next installment in the Beyond Good and Evil series. The second title is coming after 15 years which a very big gap. Seeing it making it back to the screen after this great time gap gives up hope that we will one day see Splinter Cell return.
Let us know in the comments section below if you want the Splinter Cell franchise to make a comeback and will you be willing to play it if it deviates its formula away from stealth?
