Ubisoft has launched Rainbow Six Siege: X with an interesting new announcement.

Ubisoft officially revealed Rainbow Six Siege: X last February. The month after, they showed its key features, with the spotlight on the new gameplay mode Dual Front.
Today, Rainbow Six Siege: X launches with a free tier. They’ve dubbed it as free access, but to be clear, this is not a free-to-play model where you can mess around with free in-game currencies to eventually earn everything in-game.
Quite simply, the Free Access tier gives you access to Quick Match, Unranked, and Dual Front, as well as a selection of unlockable operators.
If you want to buy the game, you have your pick of Elite and Ultimate Editions, which we will explain below.
Elite Edition includes everything in the free tier, but also adds Ranked Mode, Siege Cup Tournaments, and 16 additional operators that are immediately unlocked. This Edition retails for $ 19.99.
These operators seem to be completely different from those available in the free tier. In fact, it’s pretty transparent that free tier operators are covered up with helmets, shades, masks and others, while these 16 operators, such as Hibana and Caveira, are some of the most recognizable in the game.
Lastly, Ultimate Edition has everything that’s in the free and Elite tiers, but raises the additional operators from 16 to 52, and adds 4-Operator Cosmetic Bundles. We suspect, if this tier doesn’t give access to all the available operators, it probably adds the lion’s share of them. This Edition retails for $ 39.99.
Aside from buying one of these special editions, Ubisoft has also added Rainbow Six Siege: X to Ubisoft + Premium, as well as on Game Pass and PlayStation Plus. While it isn’t mentioned here, Ubisoft announced last month that they would make changes to R6 bundles as well.
For those who haven’t played this game before, that means that Rainbow Six Siege: X still has in-game transactions with an in-game currency, but they’re also still selling premium editions of the game. And there is a battle pass, but Ubisoft will simply carry over the pass system from Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.
After cancelling XDefiant, it’s clear that Ubisoft has doubled down on their bet with Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege instead. In this current video game market, it doesn’t make sense for even big monied AAAs to try to spread their wings by making games to enter every genre out there. Ubisoft certainly needs hits at this time, and that means playing it safe, even if it means making whales out of their existing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege fanbase. The upside? If you haven’t played this game yet at all, it’s a really good time to jump in. You can literally try it out for free now.
You can watch the launch trailer below.
