Rumor: Rainbow Six Siege Is Getting An XCOM-Style Tactics Game Spinoff

Ubisoft may have interesting new plans surrounding Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege.

As reported by Tom Henderson for Insider Gaming, Ubisoft is planning to make a turn-based tactical spinoff of their live service tactical shooter. To quote one of Tom’s two sources:

“just watch some XCOM gameplay if you want to get an idea, I’d say it’s an updated version of that with cinematic cutscenes and so on.”

The game is planned to be 25 to 30 hours long. And platforms include PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Tom says it may be coming to the Switch 2, which suggests either his sources don’t know or it’s too early in development to have planned for it.

Tom’s sources also don’t seem to agree if the team working on the game will join the plans to make a subsidiary which will be licensing the Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six franchise among others.

Tactical turn based games have low key become an increasingly popular genre. If it isn’t quite as huge as live service games like Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, it’s ideally suited to expand the franchise without being too much of a threat to the main game itself.

It’s also interesting that the comparison to XCOM came up. The first game in this franchise, known as UFO: Enemy Unknown or XCOM: UFO Defense, released for DOS, Amiga, and the PlayStation between 1994 to 1995.

On the other hand, the very first Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six game, which came to Windows 95, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, and Dreamcast, was released in 1998. So it took nearly three decades for the Rainbow Six franchise to be reimagined as a turn based tactical game.

This rumor comes weeks after Ubisoft officially revealed Siege X, a major upgrade that revamps the graphics and includes new gameplay modes and content. Ubisoft clearly now sees Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege as one of their reliable money makers, and they are looking for ways to further capitalize on its popularity.

We won’t be holding our breath on a Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege visual novel or fighting game, but it will certainly be interesting if Ubisoft uses this as an opportunity to expand the story of the franchise. We could see this as an opportunity to bring in characters from other Tom Clancy’s franchise games, such as Sam Fisher, or members of Ghost Recon or The Division. Maybe this is where we’ll finally find out how they’re all interconnected? But for now, we’ll have to wait for when Ubisoft announces it.