After pulling in $1 billion since launch, the folks behind Rainbow Six Siege are in no rush to get a sequel out there. At a recent pro tournament, Rainbow Six Brand Director Alexandre Remy chatted with the Daily Star about their approach to next-gen systems.
“We don’t want a sequel whatsoever,” said Remy. He added, “…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.”
Remy also circled back on a previous comment he made about Siege eventually having more than 100 playable operators.
As for how the bump in specs will influence Siege on next-gen consoles? Remy likened it to treating them as a “high-end PC versus another PC.” But also said that conversation is just beginning between them and Sony and Microsoft. Whatever upgrade happens, the folks behind Siege want to make sure there’s no gameplay advantage to playing on newer consoles.
You can’t blame Ubisoft and the devs for not wanting to rush out a sequel. Siege continues to be one of the most popular games on all platforms. It’s the biggest shooter on Xbox besides Fortnite and continues to sit comfortably on Steam’s top 5 most played games. Why start a community from scratch with a new release when you have a game that continues to bring in millions and millions of players every month.
Rainbow Six Siege is in a unique position here. They’re one of the only games that didn’t go free-to-play that still managed to grow and maintain a massive audience for years. Fortnite 2 would have no trouble being an instant hit because there would be no price barrier. A Rainbow Six Siege sequel doesn’t have that same guarantee because it would most likely launch as a $60 title.
While a new entry of Rainbow Six isn’t in the cards right now, the game will still be one of the headliners at Ubisoft’s E3 conference next week. Expect more specifics on what the second half of Year 4 will bring. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a tease of what Year 5 has in store for the popular tactical shooter.
A new special event mode would be cool. Give us Sam Fisher and a mini version of Spies Vs. Mercs while we wait for Ubisoft to give us a new Splinter Cell.