New Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed games confirmed for Oculus VR
Sam Fisher is back (again) but not as you know him (again)
Update: Ubisoft is officially working on new Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed games for virtual reality.
Both games are being chiefly developed by Ubisoft's Red Storm studio, whose previous VR projects include Star Trek: Bridge Crew and Werewolves Within. The new projects were announced along with many others - and the proper unveiling of the Oculus Quest 2 - during the Facebook Connect event today.
We don't know any specifics regarding what the Splinter Cell and Assassin's Creed games will be about, and their respective teaser images seem to be general franchise art rather than anything game-specific. In any case, it's exciting to know a new Splinter Cell game is definitely on the way - now if we could just get one for PS5 and Xbox Series X…
Original story follows
Ubisoft is reportedly set to announce new entries in two of its best-known franchises at today’s Facebook Connect event. According to Vandal, new Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell titles will be unveiled later today. The catch? They’re both VR games.
The report follows up on rumours that arose in summer 2019, claiming that both franchises would be coming to the Oculus Quest. While there’s been no official word on either game, Vandal’s article features quotes from developers at Red Storm Entertainment, a Ubisoft studio said to be leading development on the projects, which state that “Oculus’ next-generation hardware will allow us to bring the worlds of Assassin’s Creed and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell to life in a new way for fans.”
With Facebook seemingly hoping to unveil its Oculus Quest 2 headset at today’s event, it would make sense that it would be hoping to have some flagship games to ship with its new VR hardware.
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But the decision to bring Splinter Cell back as a virtual reality experience may not go down well with fans. The Assassin’s Creed series has been well served in recent years, but Sam fisher has often been relegated to spin-off titles and cameos in some of Ubisoft’s other successful games, most recently Rainbow Six Siege. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has previously suggested that developers are nervous about bringing the series back given the weight of expectation, but has also stated that it would return, albeit with new experiences, and “on different devices.”
The Facebook Connect event kicks off at 18:00 BST/13:00 ET/10:00 PDT.
We could soon be looking at some sneaky new entries in our list of the best VR games.
I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.