Rainbow Six Siege planned for PS5 and Xbox Series X ‘at launch’

Ubisoft intends to release Rainbow Six Siege for PS5 and Xbox Series X when the next-gen consoles launch, according to the game’s director.

Director Leroy Athanassoff has also confirmed that current and next-gen players within console families will be able to play against each other, and that it would like to support cross-play between Microsoft and Sony systems.

“For Siege, our target is to be available right at launch,” Athanassoff told Windows Central of plans for a next-gen release.

“We would love to be fully cross-play — have Xbox players matchmaking against the PlayStation players,” he added, although he noted this is ultimately down to Sony and Microsoft.

“We are ready to support that. And hopefully, this will happen because as I said, it’s a general move in the industry, and there is nothing that can prevent that. It’s just a matter of time before it happens.”

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds recently added console cross-play, while Modern Warfare supports the feature across consoles and PC.

Ubisoft has previously spoken of not wanting to fragment the Rainbow Six Siege player base, which reached 50 million in September 2019, according to the company.

Over the weekend it released a developer diary (above) focused on its Rainbow Six Siege plans for the next two years, and another video looking at the game’s next major update, Operation Void Edge, which introduces two new playable Operators, Iana and Oryx.

Rainbow Six Siege has generated more than €1 billion in cumulative net bookings since its December 2015 release, according to Ubisoft.

The latest series entry, Rainbow Six Quarantine, was delayed last year as Ubisoft moved to restructure its editorial team following the disappointing commercial performance of 2019 releases The Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint.