What you need to know
- Ubisoft has debuted new South African servers for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege.
- The expansion improves connectivity in the region, first available on Xbox One today, with PlayStation 4 and PC to follow.
Ubisoft is rolling out new regional servers for Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege on Xbox One, expanding its multiplayer infrastructure to South Africa. Following several weeks of small-scale trials via the Test Server environment, the studio has kicked off a deployment to live servers, starting with Microsoft's home console on December 9, 2019.
Updated December 10, 2019: Ubisoft has expanded the availability of South African servers to PlayStation 4, with PC to follow at a later date.
Rainbow Six Siege thrives on tense multiplayer shooter combat, heavily reliant on low-latency connectivity. The game splits its player count across a handful of localized servers, as common among many titles, shaving vital milliseconds caused by geographical distance. The expansion into South Africa follows Ubisoft's highest monthly player count to date, improving connectivity for those in the region.
While Ubisoft has kicked off deployment among Xbox One players, it looks to stagger availability over the weeks ahead. PlayStation 4 and PC servers are slated to follow, provided they meet Ubisoft standards.
"We are happy to announce than South African server tests during Operation Shifting Tides test servers were successful," stated Rainbow Six Siege Community Manager, Jenny Feng. "We are deploying permanent servers in the country for Xbox One on Monday, December 9th. If the servers stability meets with our quality standards, we will deploy the servers on other platforms in the following weeks."
Servers on the continent follow the recent expansion of Microsoft Azure, opening new South African data centers in early 2019. Rainbow Six Siege has leveraged Azure to power its destructive sandbox since launch, providing the oversight of one of the top global providers. Microsoft claims it was the first of those big players to expand into the region, providing a ripe opportunity to expand the Rainbow Six networking reach.
Rainbow Six Siege Xbox One users located in proximity to South Africa will see servers going online today, with PlayStation 4 and PC to follow, potentially in early 2020.
Addictive, challenging shooter action
Ubisoft's hit shooter is hotter than ever, touting tense tactical gameplay, and regular free updates. With millions of players in 2019, Rainbow Six isn't slowing down.
