Ubisoft announces The Division 2

Ubisoft has announced a sequel for their military manshoot MMO The Division.

The Division was, from a business perspective, a roaring success for developers Ubisoft. It was their most successful launch of all time, selling more copies in its first 24 hours than any Ubisoft game before it. At the game’s recent two year anniversary Ubisoft announced that 20m players had taken to the frozen streets of New York.

The playerbase then levelled some criticism at the game for its flat end-game and problems in the player vs player Dark Zone. Player numbers fell, things were looking bleak for the game. However, the game turned around with the 1.4 update last year, and the recent 1.8 update has also garnered critical acclaim.

However, as the games development adage goes: you can only launch once. Now that the Division has grown to become a fairly popular MMO, a sequel could be the best way to show players that things have changed.

Several new features introduced with these updates come with the feeling of Massive Entertainment prototyping ideas for a future sequel and indeed, the game’s creative director Julian Gerighty said in a livestream: “There are so many stories and so many experiences we want to explore within the Division that we really thought a sequel was the best way to investigate these things.”

A wide assortment of Ubisoft teams will be working on the game. Development will be lead by Massive Entertainment, but Ubisoft Annecy, Redstorm, Reflections, Ubisoft Bucharest, Ubisoft Sofia and Ubisoft Shanghai will also be shouldering some of the development load.