A new report reveals that Ubisoft's Splinter Cell franchise was set to get a brand-new entry, before the company shifted the project to take advantage of the Games as a Service model to spawn the ill-fated X Defiant. Fans of Sam Fisher and the Splinter Cell series are on a seemingly endless wait for a new game in the franchise, especially with the continued development struggles of the remake.
With the last mainline entry, Splinter Cell Blacklist, launching in 2013, fans of the franchise have had to settle for cameos with lead character Sam Fisher appearing in games like Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Rainbow Six: Siege, and even getting a Netflix animated series. Ubisoft continued to address questions regarding the franchise at major tradeshow events, but nothing concrete had really materialized until an announced remake of the very Splinter Cell game was announced back in 2021. While fans continue to wait for news on the remake, it seems they were closer than they realized to an actual new entry in the popular stealth series.
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A New Splinter Cell Game Almost Happened
The new report comes from industry insider Jason Schreier in an article detailing how the recent hit Dispatch came to be. When talking with members of AdHoc Studio, Co-Founder Nick Herman and former developers of Telltale Games joined with Ubisoft's San Francisco office back in 2017 to work on a then secret project, which was ultimately planned to be a new entry in the Splinter Cell franchise. Herman admitted his excitement about working on the series, which to that point had largely been left dormant, and felt that the team could not only tell a great story, but do something with it that longtime fans would love.
However, the feeling wouldn't last long as, just months later, Ubisoft became highly interested in the Games-as-a-Service model, which allows companies to monetize games for months and sometimes years after launch, like Destiny 2, Fortnite, and other online-style games. While the team started prototyping a narrative GaaS game, Ubisoft seemingly decided to pivot off Splinter Cell entirely in an effort to make something competitive to an online shooter like Call of Duty.
Overtime, the work took shape and eventually became XDefiant, an online multiplayer shooter that collected fictional characters from many of Ubisoft's big franchises like The Division, Rainbow Six, Watch_Dogs, Ghost Recon, Far Cry, Assassin's Creed and even the aforementioned Splinter Cell. The ill-fated project rocketed out to a massive player base in May 2024, becoming the fastest Ubisoft title to hit 1 million unique players, but momentum quickly slowed down and xDefiant ultimately ended development in December of that same year.
Unfortunately, news hasn't been any better for the Splinter Cell series as the previously announced remake has largely been missing in action. In addition to its lengthy development cycle, the Splinter Cell remake game director Andy Schmoll departed the project. What's alarming is that Schmoll ultimately replaced former game director David Grivel, who left the project sometime in 2022. The lack of news from Ubisoft as well as all these staff departures are no doubt leaving many fans concerned about the project overall.
Source: Bloomberg