As Seth Luisi stated in his interview, they are not looking to impress the old school hardcore gamer but looking to broaden their audience. What does this mean? They are changing Socom to attract a larger base which in my books is good.
If they never changed anything, always brought back previous maps, used the same game dynamics so on and so on, they everyone would just bitch that it's the same game as they have in the past. It's time for change, time for a different engine, time for new maps. Out with the old and in the new. This is going to be the best move yet.
Cuz