Splinter Cell: Conviction demo locked in for Thursday

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, St. Patrick's Day revelers sober enough to operate an Xbox 360 will be able to sample Splinter Cell: Conviction. Microsoft and Ubisoft have announced that a demo of the upcoming stealth-action game will be available starting March 18, roughly one month ahead of its launch.

According to Ubisoft, the demo will be single-player and contain the first part of the Michigan Avenue Reservoir level. The publisher said the demo will introduce players to the heavily reworked game's core mechanics, including the mark-and-execute and last-known-position features. Part of the demo was shown at last year's Tokyo Game Show, about the same time GameSpot got some hands-on time with the game.

Splinter Cell: Conviction will ship for the Xbox 360 on April 13 in a variety of configurations, including a 250GB Xbox 360 bundle and special edition set. Though it also will be released that day for Windows systems, no PC demo plans were made public. Ubisoft's relations with many PC gamers have been frosty since it announced a new digital-rights management system that requires a constant online connection to Ubi.com. The scheme was upended last week, when denial-of-service attacks brought down much of Ubi.com's functionality.

For more on Splinter Cell: Conviction, check out GameSpot's recent preview from last week's 2010 Game Developers Conference.