Ubisoft wasn't worried about delays that year because Assassin's Creed would 'bring in the money.'
It's been three years since the last Splinter Cell, but it wasn't originally meant to be that way. Conviction was originally supposed to launch in 2007, but a lukewarm reception at Ubidays made them reconsider the release date.
"Actually we felt that the game wasn't well received [at Ubidays] and some of the critics were actually saying that we were missing the gameplay, when we started having maybe a bit of trouble bringing back the core gameplay, and we saw the success that Assassin's Creed was going to have, Ubisoft made the decision to say, 'Look guys, take the time you need to do this game, we've got someone bringing in the money for the next year so we're okay, we won't ship a game that's not good, so go ahead and take the time to do it," production manager Andréane Meunier told Eurogamer.
"That took the pressure off us and allowed us to rework the core values that we wanted to bring out."
Conviction suffered numerous delays, with no news on development appearing until shortly before E3 2009. It was there that we had the chance to try the new demo, which seems to have "serious potential."
Unfortunately, we'll have to wait a little longer to see whether Conviction lives up to that potential, as it was recently delayed into 2010. After so many delays, it'll be interesting to see whether it was worth it.
