Rainbow 6: Patriots was announced in 2011 before being delayed to post-2013 then Ubisoft decided that it "wasn't working" and "had to be remade" from scratch for new-gen consoles.
"We had a core team. They had a good vision. They got started, and then the game wasn't working. So [they had] to start again," admitted Ubisoft North America president Laurent Detoc.
"There's an editorial group in Ubisoft, a big group, very influential. If the game is not good enough, they say it's not good enough. Most of the time, the team will say, 'yeah, I know.' But sometimes they want to continue in a direction where you say, 'no, it's not going to work,'" he explained.
But the team was incorrect on that one and in the end "Rainbow had to be remade." On the plus side however, the game Patriots is "going to have the benefit of the new consoles, if and when it comes out."
"It's one of those examples where you try, it doesn't work, you try again. If it doesn't work, we're not going to bring it to you," the Ubisoft CEO asserted.
The new Rainbow Six team has complete freedom to take or leave anything from the unreleased version. In fact, the game might not follow the same story or carry the Patriots moniker if they "don't want to do counter-terrorist guys".