In an interview with Edge magazine Max Beland, new (as of 2008) Ubisoft Montreal executive describes how many people found the stealth based gameplay of previous Splinter Cell titles, mainly Chaos Theory and Double Agent, too much for the casual crowd. Despite high critical praise of past entries in the series, Beland feels that the way to more people's game libraries and to expand the Splinter Cell brand is to focus more on brutal action sequences and less on specific stealth, which he referred to as "good and fun stealth gameplay, but its hardcore."
Refresh my memory but when did exciting, intense stealth based action games start being marketed to the Guitar Hero crowd? I enjoy my casual titles as much as the next person, but it sets a very dangerous precedent when major developers and publishers begin changing proven, unique, and popular gameplay mechanics to try and take a "hardcore" property to a more "casual", mainstream crowd.
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