Ubisoft Montreal hopes Rainbow Six Siege goes free-to-play in the future

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 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege could become a free-to-play game. Ubisoft Montreal is up to make the jump (via PCGamesN).

“I think on the development team we want that at some point,” said director Leroy Athanassoff in an interview with PC Gamer. “We want the game to be accessible to everyone.” There are a couple of qualifiers, though. Ubisoft has the final word on the direction of Rainbow Six Siege, even if the team would like to see it turn into a free-to-play title. There have been a handful of free-to-play weekends in the past, to be fair. Secondly, the game itself isn’t suited to that specific structure at the moment.
“You need certain features ready to be a good and successful free-to-play game,” explained Athanassoff. “What’s important for us is that we find out as soon as possible that a player is highly skilled in the things that matter. The problem right now is that you can play a certain amount of matches with copper[-ranked] players while you’re a diamond.”
If this does come to pass, then players playing on the current generation and the next generation of consoles will be able to enter matches together (fingers crossed). “We don't want to break our community. So, we want people who buy the new system right away to play it with their friends,” stated Athanassof in a previous interview. “This is more a discussion between Microsoft and Sony. We would love to be fully cross-play—have Xbox players matchmaking against the PlayStation players. 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.”
Rainbow Six Siege is out now on PS4, Xbox One and PC.