Last Thursday, May 6, Ubisoft announced that is developing a new “The Division” game. Called “Tom Clancy’s The Division: Heartland”  it is slated to be released within the 2021-2022 window and it will be a free-to-play game for the Xbox, Playstation, Windows PC and even cloud gaming platforms (think Google Stadia).

In a news post at the Ubisoft website, the company reveals the game and other plans they have for The Division series:

While work continues on The Division 2, other Ubisoft teams have been exploring additional ways to introduce The Division to even more players. Today, we’re pleased to share that Tom Clancy’s The Division Heartland, a free-to-play game set in The Division universe, is in development at our Red Storm studio. Having worked on Tom Clancy games since 1997, its extensive experience across numerous genres and games, most recently The Division and The Division 2, makes Red Storm a perfect fit for this project. Heartland is a standalone game that doesn’t require previous experience with the series but will provide an all new perspective on the universe in a new setting. The game will be made available in 2021-22 on PC, consoles, and cloud. Those interested in participating in its early test phases can sign up here.

As previously announced, brand new content will be coming to The Division 2, with development led by Ubisoft Massive and support from Ubisoft Bucharest. While it’s still too early to discuss any specific details, this update will include an entirely new game mode for The Division franchise and new methods for levelling your agents with an emphasis on increasing build variety and viability. We look forward to revealing more later this year ahead of this content’s late 2021 release.

The question is, what is this free-to-play game as the announcement is light on details? Is it a Battle Royal game given that some of the biggest shooter first person and third person shooter games are Battle Royale games or have their own versions made for Battle Royale such as “Call of Duty: Warzone” and we suspect it will be given the success of such games? One thing for sure is that it is a standalone game.

“Heartland” is just one component in the “transmedia” expansion of The Division, which means exploring other revenue streams that go beyond video games such as novels. In February, it was announced a Netflix The Division film is in the works with Red Notice director, Rawson Marshall Thurber, hired to direct the film after David Leitch stepped down as director due to scheduling conflicts. Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain will star in the film and will follow the events in the first The Division game when New York City was decimated by a virus that is spread via paper money on Black Friday.

Also, a mobile The Division game is also development and just like the announcement of “Heartland”, it is still sparse on details. Will it follow the way of “Call of Duty: Mobile” which already has surpassed 500 million downloads?

With the Ubisoft set on expanding “The Division” universe, will it be able to accomplish such feat that Disney has done with Marvel and Star Wars? It will still be too early to say.