While that statement from Ubisoft leaves the door open for future updates regarding the Xbox/Ubisoft partnership, Ubisoft seems to be making it pretty clear that they do not currently plan to offer Game Pass subscribers access to Ubisoft+ via a bundle deal. Those who wish to access Game Pass and Ubisoft+ will seemingly still need a subscription to each service for the foreseeable future.
What about Rainbow Six Extraction, though? If Ubisoft doesn’t intend to add Ubisoft+ access to Game Pass Ultimate, why are they giving Game Pass users day one access to one of their first major new releases of 2022?
Well, Ubisoft hasn’t made that part of their plan entirely clear as of the time of this writing, but it’s easy enough to make an educated guess about what this somewhat surprising series of decisions really means.
First off, there’s doesn’t seem to be much of a mystery regarding Ubisoft’s decision to bring Ubisoft+ to Xbox. They obviously want as many people as possible to be able to access the service, so bringing it to Xbox makes perfect sense. The only real question is why it took so long for them to bring the service to consoles.
So far as that goes, it’s possible that Ubisoft’s decision to bring Extraction to Game Pass on day one may have helped “sweeten the deal” for the Xbox team. While there’s been no official word regarding the possibility that Extraction was used as a bargaining chip, it’s certainly not unheard of for such decisions to be part of a larger agreement in one way or another, especially if Microsoft had any concerns about adding what some could see as a “rival” subscription service to their Game Pass platforms.
I’ve also heard that this move could have been prompted by concerns regarding Extraction‘s projected retail performance, and while there has also been no official indication that is the case, we’ve obviously seen companies across various entertainment mediums turn to streaming and subscription services in recent years as a way to increase a new release’s exposure.