Rainbow Six Siege director expects a player dip when GTA VI launches
Joshua Mills, creative director of Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege, expects his game to lose players when Grand Theft Auto VI comes out. He said so in an interview with The Game Business, and said it would happen to everyone, whatever the genre.
"We've got a massive launch coming with GTA," Mills said. "It doesn't matter what genre you're in - you're going to take a hit when that drops." He expects players to come back afterwards, and admitted that his own team will be playing it too.
Mills, whom Insider Gaming describes as Siege's new creative director, said the important thing is to set sensible expectations so the team and Ubisoft headquarters stay on the same page. A drop in player numbers can make developers anxious, he said, but it is usually temporary. Ubisoft's plan is to "serve the players who stay like kings and queens" and not to go on vacation just because a competitor is swelling the market.
According to Mills, Siege's Season Four will arrive around the time GTA VI launches, and Ubisoft is holding back some unannounced surprises for it. Insider Gaming adds that the BLAST R6 Major in Osaka runs from November 6 to 15, and Ubisoft will show upcoming Siege content at the grand final on November 15.
IGN notes that other publishers are squeezing their releases into September and early October. Apart from Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, it says, nobody else seems ready to put a big-budget game out in November.
