In a surprisingly lowkey announcement, Ubisoft has revealed work has begun on The Division 3 but it’s years away from release.
For a while there it looked like there wasn’t going to be a Division 3. There’s a live service take on the franchise in development, subtitled Heartland, but after The Division 2 proved a disappointment it seemed like Ubisoft might just leave it at that.
They’re not going to, but their announcement of The Division 3 is as lowkey as you could possibly get. Rather than the game itself, they sent out a press release about Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty being made executive producer of the entire The Division brand.
Then, as if the news was already known, they just causally mentioned that The Division 3 is currently in development.
‘As executive producer, Julian Gerighty will oversee all The Division games and products, including Tom Clancy’s The Division 3, led by Massive Entertainment who is actively building a team for the game,’ is all that Ubisoft has said on the matter.
There’s no indication of when the game might be released but if a team is only being built up now then it must be in the very earliest stages, and at least three to five years away from launch.
That alone explains the brevity of the announcement, especially as developer Massive Entertainment already has two, well… massive projects on the go at the moment.
The Far Cry-esque Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora is due out this December, while fellow licensed game Star Wars Outlaws is due sometime next year, after which Massive can concentrate solely on The Division 3 (Heartland is being made by Red Storm Entertainment).
Ubisoft insists that Gerighty ‘remains fully committed’ to Star Wars Outlaws and will remain on the project ‘through launch.’ Although clearly his attention is going to be divided to at least some degree.
Although The Division 2 underperformed according to Ubisoft’s own metrics, it still managed to sell over 10 million copies, which is a lot and would certainly guarantee a sequel under normal circumstances.
Whether there’ll be a major change in direction for the series, to try and ensure the third game does better, remains to be seen, but Heartland should provide the first clues, even if we have to wait a few years to see The Division 3 in public.
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