Sawt Falasteen - Ubisoft targets new decade of 'Rainbow 6' with China expansion

"We're stepping things up a lot for 2026 with China coming aboard," said Francois-Xavier Deniele, head of marketing and esports for the franchise.

"The balance is going to change, we know that when they arrive in a game, they're extremely competitive".

Chinese internet giant TenCent has climbed aboard as an investor in "Rainbow Six" and Ubisoft's other top-selling titles "Assassin's Creed" and "Far Cry".

The mega-franchises are stabled together in one of a string of new "creative houses", supposed to offer the group's development teams more financial and creative freedom after several years of financial woes, job cuts and a tumbling share price.

China is "a very, very mature market, a lot more mature even than (the West) for this kind of game," Deniele said.

But TenCent's billion-euro investment in exchange for a 26-percent stake in Vantage, finalised last November, suggests it believes in Ubisoft titles' ability to hold their own.

With a $3-million prize pool, this weekend's Ubisoft-organised invitational event in Paris for top teams is "a heck of a signal" that "shows we're capable of packing the Adidas Arena," Deniele said.

The Paris venue's 8,000 seats are more often filled by basketball or music fans.

In China, "it's totally natural for the new generation to watch esports matches and play with their friends in PC bangs (cybercafes)... very similar to Korea," Deniele said.

This year's busy esports season for "Siege" follows on from last year's revamp of its systems and graphics, which "laid the foundations for the 10 years ahead," he added.

A team first-person shooter in the vein of genre classics like "Counter-Strike", "Rainbow Six Siege" is one of Ubisoft's biggest titles, rewarding coordinated tactical play and deft use of destructible environments.

- Fierce competition -

"Siege" has not escaped wobbles of its own in recent months.

Hackers gained access in December to systems that allowed them to ban or restore large numbers of accounts and manipulate the game's cosmetic item marketplace -- a key source of revenue.

In such cases "the community needs to be reassured very quickly", Deniele said, crediting the "ultra-fast" reaction of the development team for the fact that "people came back to the game and were happy with what we were able to do".

Developers must also ensure a steady pipeline of fresh content for today's long-lived online games, with "Rainbow Six" facing competition from incumbents such as "Call of Duty", "Valorant" or "Overwatch".

New challengers are also constantly emerging onto the unforgiving field.

Wildlight Entertainment, developers of fantasy shooter title "Highguard", which launched in January to great fanfare, on Wednesday announced layoffs from its small development team -- leaving only a "core group" to maintain the game.

At this weekend's "Rainbow Six" event "we'll be announcing a quicker release schedule for content, because people want more and more", Deniele said.

"It's a game people play every day, so we have to get faster."

D.Khalil--SF-PST