Ubisoft cancels Ghost Recon battle royale and Splinter Cell VR
Work on two other unannounced games has also been halted.
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Ubisoftrevealed today that it has halted development ofGhost Recon FrontlineandSplinter Cell VR, as well as two other projects that had not yet been announced.
The decision to end development of the games was made as Ubisoft focuses on achieving “sizable cost optimization” in the upcoming fiscal year, chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said during today’s financial call. As part of that process, Duguet said Ubisoft will put “even more focus on our biggest development opportunities, as evidenced by our decision to stop development of the Splinter Cell VR game, Ghost Recon Frontlines, and two other unannounced titles.”
Ghost Recon Frontline was announced in October 2021 as a free-to-play battle royale, but the response to the game was profoundly negative—the announcement video has more than four times as many dislikes as likes onYouTube—and a planned beta test washaltedjust one day before it was set to begin. The FrontlineTwitteraccount has been silent ever since.
Splinter Cell VR, on the other hand, may have simply been too niche: The August 2020 Steam hardware survey indicated that only 1.70% of Steam users own a VR headset of any sort, and two years later that number has only increased to1.87%. The Splinter Cell game was being developed for Oculus hardware so it might’ve found a larger audience on the Meta Quest store, but the potential player base is still tiny compared to a conventional game. Ubisoft already has one of those in the works: A full remake of theoriginal Splinter Cellwas announced last year, and drew a much more positive response from fans.
Ubisoft hasn’t made a formal announcement about the status of either game at this point, but I’ve reached out for more information on both cancellations, and will update if I receive a reply.
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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill.Lotsof Henry Cavill.
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