Back in the day,Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six was the top dog when it came to team-based, tactical shooters. In fact, along withanother Tom Clancy-branded franchise, Ghost Recon, the first title in the series is widely credited with inventing the genre. However, the franchise's dominance didn't last. The series' last console title, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, is almost seven years old, while its proposed follow-up, Rainbow Six: Patriots, was cancelled during the transition to current-generation consoles.

Don't count Rainbow Six out just yet, however. At E3 2014, Ubisoft blew away the audience with a surprise trailer for Rainbow Six: Siege. Similar to Battlefield Hardline, Rainbow Six: Siege is a multiplayer-focused shooter that casts one group of players as terrorists taking hostages, and another as the SWAT officers trying to take them down. The game's battlefields are small, making its fights brutal and frantic. According to hands-on impressions at E3, Rainbow Six: Siege's gameplay lived up to its impressive trailer, garnering a number of awards and making Siege one of the most anticipated titles of 2015.

So far, there's just one problem with Rainbow Six: Siege: gamers are still waiting to get their hands on it. While the game is on the verge of entering alpha (PC owners only, unfortunately), and Ubisoft recently spilled details regarding the game's closed beta (interested parties will need to pre-order), the game's actual release date remained a mystery - at least until now. According to a retail listing from GameStop Italy, Rainbow Six: Siege is scheduled to debut on October 16, 2015.

According to VG24/7, who broke the news, this could just be a placeholder; however, October 16 is a Friday, which is the day when games are usually released in the UK. Additionally, while this release date would only seem to apply to gamers on the other side of the Atlantic, it provides a hint as to when North American customers will get a shot at Rainbow Six: Siege. Ubisoft has already confirmed that the game is scheduled for fall 2015, and it's likely that the title will release around the same time in all territories.

As this site has mentioned before, Ubisoft didn't have a fantastic 2014, with high-profile releases like Assassin's Creed Unity arriving half-finished, and falling prey to a slew of embarrassing bugs. As such, the studio has a lot riding on Rainbow Six: Siege. If Ubisoft delivers another underbaked product or fails to live up to their lofty promises (such as the announcement that Rainbow Six: Siege will run at a consistent 60 frames-per-second), it could hurt the company's reputation - and bottom line - even more. Nobody wants that, especially not the Rainbow Six fans who have been waiting patiently for the series to return to its former glory.

Rainbow Six: Siege comes out fall 2015 for PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.

Source: VG24/7