The password is s9p1z6
Having an established brand can both be a benefit and a potential hindrance, and Tom Clancy's EndWar is a perfect example of that. While an East vs. West large scale confrontation fits naturally within the framework of the general brand, developing it as a strategy could throw some people given that the Clancy games have primarily been action titles.

"One of our biggest questions we've had to deal with is 'How do we deal with this stigma of strategy games on consoles?'" acknowledged Sappenfield. "It is a challenge we've talked about since day one. A lot of our success is dependent on getting people who came to the franchise on action and stealth titles to try out EndWar. For the game itself, we got the guy who did the Total War series, so he's got a background in the genre but he's also surrounded himself with previous advisers who worked on the previous Clancy titles. What happened [to adapt the game to consoles] is we sped up the experience and we made the game entirely playable with your voice. You can just say an order, which is the equivalent of thirty clicks on a PC. At first, most people didn't know about using the voice commands, so we're having demos at select Best Buy locations and put out the demos to show that it's easy to use. It's the matter of using technology that has been around for a few years now, and with headsets as prevalent as ever, the time for a game like this is now."

Of course, while EndWar occupies a new and unique place in Clancy lore, it also pays tribute to its heritage by having some direct tie-ins to the other Clancy game franchises. "What's really interesting on [the subject of the Clancy-verse], is we introduced the game with a site called Rev64.com. Our response to that was incredible and consumers wanted to see these franchises interacted. While it can sometimes be difficult to bring together disparate gaming franchises, when it comes to EndWar, we did it in a way that makes sense. It wasn't initially designed to be a collaboration, but there were things that just fit into place: the GRAW Captain Scott Mitchell is the commander of the U.S. Joint Strike Forces, Ghost Recon itself will be the special forces, Rainbow Six characters will be special European Federation commanders, and Third Echelon handle battlefield intelligence and sniper cover in EndWar. There's also a couple shout outs to H.A.W.X. as well."

This is only the beginning
With the release coming this week, promotions for Tom Clancy's EndWar are revving up. Ubisoft will role out an ambitious advertising campaign, putting a great deal of faith in this new IP.

"The big stuff will start early November," revealed Sappenfield. "One goal is to convey the experience from voice command. We're also focusing on the broader image of this World War III type conflict. You'll see ads at MTV, Comedy Central, and during football and basketball games. We also have launch trailers that will be running on the Colbert Report on election day! It's going to be the largest American election in history, and Daily Show and Colbert Report are going to be the places to be!"

"We'll have [promotions] on the top gaming sites, like IGN and GameTrailers, and we're doing programs on Yahoo! as well as our standard ads," he continued. "In print, we're doing mostly the gamers' mags, and for broader coverage we'll be doing WWE. We have a couple others; we're looking to do more than just gaming sites. We've got a unique trailer on GameTrailers showing two parrots playing EndWar! We're opting to get broader distribution, so we also made a spoof on Monday Night Football. They have a lot of the same characteristics – war and football, that is. We'll continue doing those Best Buy demos and we've also got some headset bundles at certain retail locations."

"One thing I forgot to mention – we won the GameCritics award for best strategy game at E3, and that's the first time a console game has won that. Also, the multiplayer, which will be unlike anything you've seen, will be a persistent, online World War III. Whatever faction has won the most battles in a day will win a section, which will in turn update a global map. It will be carried out until one of the factions wins the war," he concluded.