A wave of delays hit the industry during the summer as publishers readjusted schedules based on competition and gave more time to projects in need. One of the games delayed was Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Extraction, a sci-fi co-op shooter of the popular tactical shooter franchise. Previously, Ubisoft had teased that Rainbow Six Extraction would be ready for delivery in January 2020. In a new leak, it looks like Ubisoft has decided on a final release date of January 20.
The leak comes from one of Ubisoft's own news posts released for Rainbow Six Extraction. The news post is from June 12 and is titled "Rainbow Six Extraction Unleashes Tactical Co-op Action on January 20," despite Rainbow Six Extraction being delayed from its original September launch date in July. It's not only the headline that features the new release date, but also the body of the post. It mentions that Rainbow Six Extraction will arrive on all supported platforms on January 20.
To be clear, the January 20 release date for Rainbow Six Extraction hasn't technically been officially announced. While it may have come from an official Ubisoft blog post, there's no other confirmation of this date across Ubisoft communication paths. As such, this odd news post with a confusing publication date isn't entirely reliable. Interested gamers may want to wait for further confirmation before taking the release date seriously.
It isn't obvious where Ubisoft's updated release date news post came from. While it's part of an official news story, there's no clear indication Ubisoft planned to make the reveal in such a way. The most likely scenario is that it was published on accident with too early of a publication date, making it public rather than scheduled. Alternatively, this is a mistakenly published piece with inaccurate information. Test articles like this aren't uncommon, though they're rarely ever published.
What lends the leaked release date credence is that it fits with Ubisoft's previous announcements regarding Rainbow Six Extraction's new release window. That window has been January since the game's delay in July. A January 20 release date fits nicely in that window, showing Ubisoft is delivering on its updated promised release plans.
January 2022 is also a much more open schedule in terms of game releases, whereas the September-through-November months are packed. Rainbow Six Extraction will be launching a day before Elden Ring and a week before Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but won't have any competitive multiplayer competition in the month. Hopefully, Ubisoft will provide an official statement on the matter before long.
Rainbow Six Extraction launches January 2022 on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.