Rainbow Six Siege has proven to be an incredible win for Ubisoft. In the past few years, we’ve seen the game transform from a fairly average FPS into a globally beloved Esports phenomenon.
Given the game’s success as a constantly evolving, ever shifting beast (and a prime example of how to “games as service” right), you probably won’t be too surprised to learn that Rainbow Six Siege will most likely be making its way to PS5 and the next generation of Xbox, as Ubisoft confirms it has no plans “whatsoever” for a sequel.
The Daily Star spoke with Rainbow Six Brand Director Alexandre Remy during the Pro League Season IX Finals in Milan, where he explained that the team’s end game is plug away at Rainbow Six Siege rather than release a brand new game for next gen consoles.
It’s basically the exact opposite approach to Activision’s annual Call of Duty releases, but the time and effort Ubisoft has put into maintaining the one game rather than chase multiple sequels has helped build up a massively dedicated player base
Whether we’ll end up with a straight port, or something a little more complicated to get Rainbow Six Siege on PS5 and Xbox Whatever remains to be seen, but Remy explained that Ubisoft is currently looking into ways to “migrate” the player base, or find some way of making the next-gen version cheaper for people who already owned the game on current-gen consoles.
He said:
The reason behind this is we don’t want to segregate our community between the different platforms. In an ideal world tomorrow, we’d love players from every platform to be able to play together. We are approaching next-gen with the same spirit. We’ve been asking how can we make the player base of Siege today be able to migrate – if they want to migrate, that is – but also make this cheaper [than buying a new, next-gen copy of the game] as much as possible or through backwards compatibility.
Backwards compatibility seems like the most likely (and logical) solution, at least to begin with. We already know the PS5 will support PS4 games, and will also feature cross-generational play with PS4 consoles.
It’d also be safe to assume Microsoft has something similar planned, especially given the company’s newfound approach to tearing down any and all barriers in gaming. It’s still early days for now though, as Remy confirmed Ubisoft is still having conversations with Sony and Microsoft.
Whatever happens, you can be sure that Rainbow Six Siege to isn’t going to disappear in a hurry when the current generation of consoles bow out.
If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via story@unilad.com
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.