No link of heart between Ubisoft and Sony

Jun 24, 2009 19:01 GMT  ·  By

Ubisoft is a very big game developer and publisher, currently possessing a lot of high quality franchises like Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed. But one of the most respected is the Splinter Cell series, which has taken the stealth genre to a whole new level.

After releasing a lot of titles in quick succession, the developer of the game, Ubisoft Montreal, went into a state of silence about the newest iteration in the series, Splinter Cell: Conviction. At this year's E3, the game reappeared in the public spotlight, after seeing a few complete overhauls, and captured the attention of a lot of Xbox 360 and PC gamers.

The title will arrive on the aforementioned platforms, with Ubisoft Montreal revealing the team that worked on it didn't even have a PlayStation 3 SDK, so a version for Sony's platform won't appear anytime soon. Here's a full statement regarding the subject released by Ubisoft a few days ago.

“Splinter Cell Conviction is a true Microsoft exclusive title and there are no plans to have Splinter Cell Conviction on other platforms. There are several reasons behind this choice. First of all, Splinter Cell games are historically linked with Microsoft platforms. The first Splinter Cell on the original Xbox was one of the first games to fully exploit the console's technical possibilities. At that time, Microsoft really believed in the game potential and provided strong support to promote it. So, there is a ‘link of heart’ between the franchise and the platform. Some games are like this (think of Final Fantasy for instance). The second reason behind this choice is purely linked to production. Having a single target platform means that we can optimize the game even further, because we only have one type of - console - hardware to support.”

It's pretty funny, as it seems Ubisoft didn't get the memo regarding the fact that the next game from Square Enix, Final Fantasy XIII, would appear on both the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Should this be an indication of things to come? We'll just have to wait and see whether PS3 users will get a taste of Sam Fisher's new adventures in Splinter Cell: Conviction.