Ubisoft and Microsoft have announced that Rainbow Six Extraction will launch on Game Pass on day one later this month. This will apply to console, cloud, and PC versions of the service, meaning subscribers can play it on Xbox, PC, or cloud streaming devices on January 20.
Alongside the announcement, Ubisoft also confirmed Rainbow Six Siege, the previous entry in the series, is coming to Game Pass on PC on the same day. Extraction is a spin-off of Siege, which focuses on a cooperative alternate timeline where the more grounded tactical shooter went in more science fiction direction, including aliens and other nonsense. The game was originally titled Rainbow Six Quarantine, which was changed to Extraction because who really wants to have that kind of name on your hot new video game product for people to buy when we’re two-years in to a pandemic in which we are quarantining?
While Rainbow Six is making two Game Pass debuts this month, Ubisoft is making another significant move to Xbox by bringing Ubisoft+, a subscription service that allows unlimited access to over 100 games in the company’s library, to the platform. The service originally debuted on PC back in 2019 as UPLAY+, then launched in a beta phase on Luna and Stadia streaming services in 2020. So this will be the first time Ubisoft+ has come to a console. As for when, the only window Ubisoft’s announcement gives is “in the future,” so it’s unclear just how much later it will be before Xbox users can actually use Ubisoft+ on their consoles.
Over the past year, Ubisoft has been dealing with harassment issues within the company, the handling of which hasn’t sat well with workers affected. Alongside low wages, this has led to some employees at the company leaving for other opportunities. Notably, Activision-Blizzard has been under similar (albeit more public) scrutiny for similar workplace culture issues, which apparently has Microsoft reevaluating its relationship with the company, but its partnerships with Ubisoft seem intact.
