New Rainbow Six locks down date

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six series is all about rescuing hostages being held by terrorist separatists. The Special Forces squad storms into buildings with high-tech gizmos and serious firepower to liberate the captives, disable the bad guys, and save the day.

The latest chapter, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown, introduces the idea of the squad being held captive. Ironically, the game itself has been held hostage by the developers, who are focusing on polishing the game for its retail release.

Lockdown has experienced a few delays on its road to release, leaving fans of the series biting their nails in anticipation of good news. Originally targeted for a spring 2005 release, the game was pushed back twice, with the last word being the second quarter of Ubisoft's fiscal year, somewhere between July and September.

Ubisoft narrowed the window today, announcing that the game would be available in September. However, the question of which platforms the game would be available for arose from Ubisoft's last fiscal report. A previously unannounced GameCube version was mentioned in the report, and a previously announced PC version was mysteriously missing.

According to Ubisoft, no console gamer will be left out of the antiterrorism action. Lockdown will be released for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and PC. The console versions will follow the September release date, and the PC version will be released sometime in early 2006.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown is in development by Red Storm Entertainment and Ubisoft Montreal. For more information on the game, head over to GameSpot's previous coverage.