Rainbow Six Patriots Cancellation Explained by Ubisoft

We have found out why Rainbow Six: Patriots was given the axe and how Rainbow Six: Siege became the game to take its place.

According to Rock Paper Shotgun, the jump to next-gen was one of the main reasons why Ubisoft decided to drop Rainbow Six: Patriots, despite having so much developed for the game already. In particular, Ubisoft felt that bringing the Rainbow Six series back to the forefront of gaming required a next-gen presence.

“To be completely transparent, I worked on Patriots – on Rainbow Six for three-and-a-half years – and Patriots was old-gen. Xbox 360 and PS3. Next-gen consoles were just around the corner, and we were like, OK, we want to also have a next-gen experience," said Oliver Couture, a technical artist at Ubisoft. "We were trying stuff out with destruction technology, and we realized destruction really changes the game. We tried to see how it could fit with old-gen, but it just didn’t work out. So for us it was just a better solution to clean the slate, reset, and make what’s best for the players.”

To consider that Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Patriots was being developed for more than three years and was just dropped is quite a shame. Hopefully, much of Patriot's resources and created content was able to be channeled and upgraded into Siege's development. Couture also mentions that Siege's single-player mode is still in the early stages of creation.

“We know that single-player is also an important part of the Rainbow Six experience. We understand that while this year we showed multiplayer – because we want to have fun playing against each other internally, it’s a good test to know if a game is fun – but we are 100 percent aware that single-player is a big part. We’re currently working on that too.”

Expect Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege sometime in 2015 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.