Ubisoft announces the ‘biggest transformation in Rainbow Six Siege’s history’ for later this year, so big they’re adding an ‘X’ to the name. But don’t call it a sequel

Ubisoft has announced a “new era” for Rainbow Six Siege, which will apparently begin in March with a showcase devoted to the relaunch-slash-reboot of the game as Rainbow Six Siege X. “The R6 team has been working tirelessly to bring to life the biggest transformation in the game’s history,” reads Ubisoft’s announcement post, “and its purpose is to reinforce Rainbow Six Siege’s position at the top of tactical first-person shooters by introducing new ways to play, deepened tactical gameplay, refined game feel and major upgrades all around.”

This announcement of an announcement comes with a teaser trailer, because apparently we need a period of anticipation before finding out how Ubisoft is tweaking a decade-old game. This does however seem to showcase some of the new features to expect in Siege X: Characters can be seen running across walls while rappelling, environmental damage seems to have new elements (the teaser shows a fire extinguisher being shot to provide cover, and I think at one point an explosion takes out a lightbulb), and an overhead chopper that, I’m going to hope, lets you rappel down into maps R6: Vegas-style.

So we have some idea of what Ubisoft’s going for, but the full details have to wait until the Siege X showcase on March 13 (5pm GMT / 12pm EST). The publisher says it will “unveil all the evolutions coming with Siege X” and says it “hopes that Siege X not only reinforces what you love about [Siege], but gets you as excited for its future as we are.”

The first season of year 10 has already been announced and is due to launch in March. Going on past form, this would run for three months meaning that we’re looking at Siege X around June. That is guesswork of course. But a few more details can be found in a post on the game’s subreddit, which under “Year 10: Siege X” lists:

• New era for Rainbow Six Siege after Y10S1
• Expanding and reinforcing the foundations of Siege
• Major graphical and audio upgrades

It also has the rather confusing line “update to the existing game, to a new game.” Erm… OK?

Year 10 Season 1 starts on March 4, adding the new operator Rauora (who can deploy extendable / retractable panels into doorways) alongside a rework of the Hereford Base map (Hereford was where the SAS was located until 1999) and the addition of, brace yourself, “over 1400 cosmetics from the past” to celebrate the 10th anniversary.

It also adds a new Reputation system which allows players to rate each other, which will be interesting mainly because being marked “Dishonorable” or “Disruptive” will see you locked out of certain playlists and your XP gains nerfed, while achieving the good rankings from your fellow Siegers grants you increased “standing bonus points” which players can spend on various rewards. Finally, the biggest change of all: “Wooden studs in the maps have been updated to a higher quality texture that increases resolution and adds details.”

Well…. It ain’t Rainbow Six Siege 2. But when you look at what, for example, Counter-Strike 2 did recently in replacing CS:GO but remaining incredibly faithful, you wonder whether that’s given Ubisoft’s designers the courage of their convictions. I haven’t played it recently, but Rainbow Six Siege is a fantastic tactical shooter and most of the problems players have with it tend to be around the usual issues faced by any large-scale competitive shooter—cheaters, occasional server issues, and so on. It may well be that Ubisoft is doubling-down on arguably the best competitive game the company’s ever made. And doubling-down may be just what the doctor ordered.