Those are interesting points, worth debating further though I don't have it in me right now. I do want to make a point though that Hitman: Absolution was not acclaimed by critics. In fact, they along with fans for the most part weren't fond of it. Unnecessary and drastic changes to the tried and winning formula to "please the masses" or increase "mass market appeal" meant the game fundamentally sucked. I got as far as the Orphanage level before giving it up because it was boring, uninsteresting and nothing like a Hitman game should be.
I haven't played it yet, but having played the intro I'm already a little disappointed by the new VA for Sam Fisher. Likewise, the news that Garret's VA wouldn't be reprising his role for Thi4f (because the director wanted the VA more involved for mocap and cutscenes, in what should be a fu****g first person game! WTF?) is severely disappointing. Thi4f suffers the same thing as Hitman: Absolution, whereby every trailer, screenshot and "tantalising" news release makes me want to play the game less, not more.
I'm a massive fan of the Thief and Hitman series, as well as Deus Ex, all of whose titles I played at release from a decade ago. I should be the damned target audience, not fu****g CoD morons who want everything to be a set-piece shooter with QTEs and games that play their damned selves. Make a Thief game that appeals to ME, SQUEENIX, not the misoginist, CoD playing masses and you'll have a wildly successful, cheaper to produce niche title, instead of following EA's footsteps and making Dead Space 3 that sucked in every regard and pleased no one.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution I should add as an aside was a magnum opus. It had it's fair share of issues, but the game was so well made, so polished, so fun and with such incredible production values, forethought, storytelling, characterisation and mechanics that the flaws didn't take away from it. Thie4f's only saving grace is that it's being made by the same team, but I'm not holding out much hope. They turned Tomb Raider into a generic action-adventure with pathetic "puzzles" and QTEs. Hitman: Absolution had 47 in it and little else of the franchise's formula.
If SQUEENIX want to succeed, they need to make better games that cost less that create a community, a fan following and are rememebered over a decade later as being among the greatest video games ever made.