Make a splitscreen-only Splinter Cell, demands Hazelight boss, even as Ubisoft double-down on open worlds

rockpapershotgun.com:

Hazelight founder Josef Fares has called upon Ubisoft to make a splitscreen-only Splinter Cell game - a move that even I, with my absolute lack of business acumen, recognise as being comparable to demanding that Cadbury start making chocolate bars out of soot. He thinks it would be a "guaranteed success".

I'm not saying I dislike the idea of splitscreen Splinter Cell. Ubisoft's ancient military stealth series has decent form for co-op sneakery, with players of Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory teaming up to synchro-stab the soldiery. But come now, Master Fares. I know you've got to uphold your reputation for slashing up displays but please, have some dignity. Imagine the grim faces of the Splinter Cell faithful when Yves Guillemot rolls out footage of a splitscreen-only iteration, 12 years since the last one. Imagine the dozens of green laser dots slowly appearing on Guillemot's face. Imagine the glisten of a thousand karambits being drawn from utility belts.

"Other publishers aren't doing this, and it's crazy to me," Fares commented in a recent interview with GamesRadar. "So many people are playing these games, and people love them. I mean, I'm looking at Ubisoft, and they're struggling now, and I hope someone [from there] listens to this interview, but why aren't they taking Sam Fisher and doing a split-screen-only game?

"Don't chicken out to do single-player; just say this is split-screen only," he went on. "Boom, that's it. You have success, and I can guarantee you that they will sell a huge amount of copies of that. Yeah, they don't even have to do it the Hazelight way; why don't they listen to this [interview] and be like, 'Oh, he's right.' That's a guaranteed success for them; it's for you, Ubisoft. You can get it for free from me."

It occurs to me that it's been such an age between Cells that some of you probably don't know or can't recall the premise of Splinter Cell. Here is a quick recap: there is a grumpy man in black pyjamas called Sam Fisher, with three