To any fans of the trade show E3, Ubisoft’s latest news may come as a pass and a nod but to those casual gamers who enjoyed the Rainbow Six franchise, this news may be met with a “finally!” The fictional international counter-terrorist unit, Rainbow Six is coming out of retirement. During a conference call with investors today, Ubisoft reconfirmed that along with a new Assassins’s Creed game, the Rainbow Six franchise will being seeing it’s much needed reboot with releases of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege and Tom Clancy’s The Division scheduled for later this year.
The Rainbow Six (first person at least) franchise has been on a five-year hiatus from console gaming but Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot is confident that at this stage of next generations gaming, Rainbow Six is ready to shine, “The strong install base” for the Xbox One and PS4 “should offer a nice tail-wind, and we expect software growth to come back,” he also added, “that the company is benefiting from its early investment in new IP for the current-gen systems. The company hopes to continue benefiting in the next year “with the introduction of The Division.”
While Rainbow Six’s return to consoles is big news for fans of the franchise, fans of Ubisoft should also be delighted to know they aren’t resting on their laurels. Ubisoft also mentioned five triple-A titles while the investors call, but declined to give many details on which franchises, new IP titles or dates can be expected. It’s expected that at E3 more will be revealed.
During the call it was also revealed that despite the disappearing face glitches and poor party sync up with the current batch of Assassin’s Creed games, Ubisoft saw a rise in sales to the tune of 60% over the same third quarter from last year. Perhaps that Microsoft holiday promotion was beneficial on multiple levels.