secret base in Russia. Sam and Briggs reach an abandoned naukograd, surviving a drone attack, and find a secure medical facility said to contain an OpSat (satellite uplink device used by Fourth Echelon operatives) with vital Voron information. Instead, the base contains a comatose man. Rescuing the man, Sam and Briggs narrowly escape as the base self-destructs and return the patient to the Paladin. Grim identifies him as Mikhail "Kestrel" Loskov and Kobin confirms his identity, noting that they have a history (detailed in Conviction). When he questions Kobin (who asks if Kestrel's gunshot wound has put him into a coma), Sam notes that no one had told Kobin how Kestrel had been incapacitated. Development Ubisoft Montreal's success inspired the company to continue its Canadian expansion, and a new studio, Ubisoft Toronto, was announced on July 6, 2009. Headed by Jade Raymond, the studio focuses on the creation of triple-A video games and intellectual property. It worked on a new installment of the Splinter Cell series, which was in parallel development with an unnamed project, and the Toronto team was made up of Ubisoft Montreal's core Conviction team. Maxime Béland, who had worked on Conviction, was the game's creative director, and in November 2010 Raymond confirmed that her studio was developing Splinter Cell 6. Ubisoft Toronto was the game's lead developer, with assistance from Ubisoft Montreal. Ubisoft Shanghai developed the game's co-operative multiplayer mode. The Toronto studio focused on the game's Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, with the Wii U version developed by Ubisoft Shanghai. In 2010, the series' fifth installment, Conviction, was released. Although it received generally positive reviews, it was criticized by series fans for lacking some features. Béland considered Conviction a "stepping stone" for him when he prepared for the development of Blacklist. The development team studied Conviction reviews and feature lists, deciding to discard its "black-and-white" stealth approach, and also deciding to bring back the Spies vs. Mercs mode introduced in Pandora Tomorrow. Béland called the mode's return "the easiest decision of [his] life", since the team considered its absence Conviction greatest misstep. Ubisoft sent questionnaires through Uplay to thousands of players to collect feedback on Conviction new features. When players called Conviction campaign weak and short, the team added a stronger storyline and greater character depth by introducing the Fourth Echelon and Fisher as a leader (a series first). To encourage repeat play