A new generation of game consoles is officially on the way. Microsoft has already unveiled Project Scarlett, and Sony is expected to follow suit before the year is out. However, the presence of new consoles does bring up potential issues with current games and hardware. Specifically, some Rainbow Six Siege fans are worried that Ubisoft will leave them behind when the new consoles launch.
To its credit, Ubisoft recently stated it has no such plans to just up and abandon Siege. Instead, the studio would rather find a way to transfer the Siege experience to new-gen consoles. Ideally, this would be done at a minimal cost to current Siege players.
Rainbow Six Siege Next-Gen And Sequel Comments
Rainbow Six Siege brand director Alexandre Remy tackled the next-gen issue in a recent interview with The Daily Star. According to Remy, Ubisoft isn’t prepping a Rainbow Six Siege 2 or any other sort of separate sequel game. The Siege development team has long boasted how it wants the game to someday have over 100 playable operators. Ubisoft is still committed to that goal, and thus it’s keeping its focus set on the original Rainbow Six Siege.
However, Remy also acknowledged the issue of next-gen consoles during the interview. According to Remy, Ubisoft is currently investigating options for allowing existing Siege players to migrate to newer consoles. Ideally, a migrating player also wouldn’t have to buy a separate next-gen game copy. Remy also hinted that a best case scenario would be some sort of console-agnostic cross-play system:
“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.”
Again, Remy couldn’t confirm any specifics, but it’s comforting that Ubisoft is at least looking into potential solutions. Rainbow Six Siege is beloved by thousands of players, so it makes sense Ubisoft would want to preserve its community. The studio’s hands aren’t exactly clean when it comes to shuffling players between games (The Division 2, anyone?). With Rainbow Six Siege, though, Ubisoft also wisely recognizes that splitting things up wouldn’t be for the best.
Meanwhile, Rainbow Six Siege’s next major update will be the slick-looking Operation Phantom Sight.