Current-gen players of Rainbow Six Siege may not need to worry about jumping ship to the next big thing in multiplayer shooters when the ninth console generation rolls out, as the punishingly tactical FPS is evidently coming to the PS5 and next-gen Xbox. The game apparently still has a lot more to offer players, and Ubisoft says it isn't keen on giving up on its critically acclaimed online cash cow.
Now in its fourth year of post-launch support, Rainbow Six Siege's online community is still incredibly alive and well, still topping over 100,000 players daily on PC alone. This is thanks to Ubisoft's commendably persistent dedication to improving and iterating upon the game with each passing competitive season, and the studio's efforts continue to pay in literal dividends. On top of a steady flow of quality-of-life fixes and additions, Rainbow Six Siege is only about halfway to its launch promise of offering 100 distinct operators, giving Ubisoft even more reason to bring the game over to next-gen consoles in a way that won't splinter, anger, or otherwise disappoint current-gen players.
During the Rainbow Six Siege Pro League Season 9 Finals, Ubisoft's Alexandre Remy told the Daily Star that they "don't want a sequel whatsoever." Remy explained how the studio currently intends to bridge the coming generational divide between current-gen and next-gen console players, stating:
"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. The strength of any multiplayer game is the size of its community, so I do believe that we have to make every effort possible that when next gen comes in, they are treated as a high-end PC versus another PC."
Remy admits that Ubisoft is still in the early stages of working with Microsoft and Sony to figure out exactly how Rainbow Six Siege's transition between console generations will work for players, saying he's "not sure exactly how [they'd] be able to deploy this" and that the "conversation" with the console manufacturers is just starting. Considering that purchasing the yearly sums of content that Ubisoft dutifully pumps out for Rainbow Six Siege can easily equal or exceed the price of buying an entirely new game, Remy's prescribed approach of backwards compatibility seems refreshingly generous and to put players first.
Only time will tell if Sony and Microsoft will abide by Ubisoft's desires for a seamless move to next-gen for players, and the result may still ultimately be the re-purchase of the game at full-price for players that make the jump to the upcoming consoles. However, the incredible care that the studio has taken to keep its huge following over the past few years point to the future of Rainbow Six Siege on next-gen being impressively bright.
Source: Daily Star