360 Rainbow Six announcement March 6?

Since Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3 debuted on the Xbox in 2003, the tactical action series has provided some of the most popular first-person shooters for the console. The latest game in the franchise, Rainbow Six: Lockdown, is still among the most-played first-person shooters on Xbox Live, after Halo 2 and Battlefield 2: Modern Combat.

Given Rainbow Six's popularity on the current-generation Xbox, many industry-watchers felt it was just a matter of time until the franchise was announced for the Xbox 360. By the look of a countdown clock on the series' official Web site, that time will be in just over 11 days. That's when a countdown clock on the site, which began at 360 hours, will end on March 6, 2006.

It doesn't take a numerologist to figure out that the date--3/6/06--would be ideally suited for unveiling, say, a 360 Rainbow 6 game. Underneath the clock, Ubisoft has placed a flashing message saying that when it ends, there will be a "major announcement."

Ubisoft had two words to say about the countdown clock: "no comment." The publisher, however, will likely have more than a little to say a week from next Monday.