splinter-cell-conviction posts

Splinter Cell Conviction has just been released but developer/publisher Ubisoft already has big plans for the stealth action game series going forward. Gamasutra reports that the publisher's newest development studio in Toronto will be the new home of the Splinter Cell franchise. Details of the game itself are being kept under wraps The studio also has another unnamed game in the works.

Ubisoft Toronto was launched in 2009 and is headed up by Jaye Raymond, who gained fame as the producer of the first Assassin's Creed game. The Toronto studio is expected to hire as many as 800 employees over the next 10 years.

What if you could access an entire printed strategy guide for a game while playing the game itself? That question is no longer a "What If" but a reality. Today Valve announced that it's Steam download service has begun to offer in-game strategy guides from Prima Games. While you can read the guides outside of the game Steam's UI overlay also allows you access to the guide while playing the game itself.

There are six strategy guides currently available for Left 4 Dead 2, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Just Cause 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age Origins Awakening. For a limited time you can get any of the guides for just $9.99 each, a 50 percent cut in their normal price tag.

Ubisoft's downloadable content plans for their stealth action game Splinter Cell Conviction will begin on May 27. That's the date for the first DLC release, the Insurgency Pack. The pack is specifically for the Deniable Ops portion of the game which has you playing as either Archer and Kestrel (the characters in the games' co-op themed prologue) in single player and co-op modes

All four Deniable Ops gameplay modes (Hunter, Face Off, Infiltration or Last Stand) will be available in the Insurgency Pack which will contain four new maps in several new locations; a New Orleans cemetery, the dock in San Fransisco, a prison in Portland and a secret research lab in Salt Lake City. The DLC is for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions with the console port costing 800 Microsoft points. Pricing for the PC DLC has yet to be announced.

This patch for Splinter Cell Conviction updates the game to v1.02. It includes a number of bug fixes, game enhancements and DLC support. Continue reading after the jump for the full patch notes.

Download Splinter Cell Conviction v1.02 Patch (23 MB)
Check out all Splinter Cell Conviction downloads

More and more publishers are launching their own online stores to allow for downloads of their various games. This week Ubisoft relaunced their own online store which offers both downloads and mail order retail box copies of their PC games for sale.

In order to celebrate the store's relaunch, Ubisoft has some special deals this week for PC gamers. One is that if you buy and download one of a select list of full priced PC games you can pick from one of several $10 Ubisoft games to download for free. They also have a new PC bundle deal with four Splinter Cell games, including the new Splinter Cell Conviction, on sale for $75.99.

This week PC gamers finally get a chance to play a game that was supposed to come out over two years ago. There's also a new graphical revamp of a classic first person shooter due to be released via download.

Splinter Cell Conviction: Ubisoft's long-in-development stealth action game finally is released for the PC after first coming out for the Xbox 360 a couple of weeks ago. Our favorite tough spy Sam Fisher returns in his latest installment as he goes after the people he believes killed his daughter. As usual, things are not what they seem. The game also contains multiplayer modes and co-op missions.

When Ubisoft decided to launch their "Always On" internet DRM set-up for their PC titles in March, we figured someone would try to crack it. Last month a game pirate team called Skid Row claimed to have cracked the Ubisoft DRM set up but that claim was quickly refuted by the publisher. Now Cnet reports that the same team is claiming they have finally created a hack that eliminates the need for the Ubisoft games, including Assassin's Creed 2, to have a "always on" connection.

The story says that the hack file began to circulate among pirate web sites and other locations on Tuesday. Skid Row also supposedly wrote a note to Ubisoft saying, "Next time focus on the game and not on the DRM. It was probably horrible for all legit users." So far Ubisoft has yet to respond to this latest claim.

[Via Blue's News]

Next week Ubisoft releases the PC version of the long-in-development stealth action game Splinter Cell Conviction. This week the developer/publisher announced that the game will be linked into its own achievements program Uplay. The system will let players unlock special content in the game by accomplishing different in-game tasks.

The more tasks you accomplish the more Uplay points you can accumulate. Those points are then used to unlock content such as new multiplayer skins, weapons and even a new gameplay mode, Infiltration. Now if there was a way for Uplay to unlock Ubisoft's "Always On" DRM set up. That would be cool. You can check out more about how Uplay works via the above YouTube clip.

As we get closer to Earth Day on Thursday publisher Ubisoft has announced its intentions to "go green" with a couple of changes to their PC DVD packaging and a change in their game manuals. Today Ubisoft announced that all of their future retail PC titles will use DVD packaging that contains polypropylene, which is a 100 percent recycled material. The PC release of Splinter Cell Conviction, due out next week, will be the first Ubisoft PC game that will use the new recycled packaging.

In addition, Ubisoft has made the decision to stop using printed game manuals in their retail PC games and will now use digital game manuals. In fact Ubisoft made that move last month. They have also made the decision to use digital game manuals for their console games as well. According to Ubisoft, making the switch to digital manuals is good for the environment, saying, " . . . one ton of paper used in Ubisoft's game manuals consumes an average of two tons of wood from 13 trees."

[Via email press release]

Another Ubisoft rep is trying his best to defend the company's recent decision to make their current and future PC games have an "always on" internet connection in order to be played. The latest such statement comes from Max Béland, the creative director behind their stealth action game Splinter Cell Conviction which will be released for the PC on April 27.

Chatting with VG247.com, Béland states, "We consider that protecting our PC games is vital to our business and will allow us to continue investing in the development of creative and innovative games on the PC platform.' We are all for Ubisoft wanting to make "creative and innovative games on the PC platform" but we think some legit consumers are still being turned away because of Ubisoft's new policy.