What does the X in Rainbow Six: Siege X stand for?

Sometimes game names struggle to make much sense to consumers and fans outside of the developer. This also stretches to other parts of the game business, like consoles, with Xbox forsaking any form of coherent progression for its unorthodox Xbox 360 into Xbox One into Xbox Series X/S evolution, as just one example. It's because of this that you can see some game titles and ponder why they are named what they are named, but for Ubisoft's Rainbow Six: Siege X at least, the choice of title actually makes a lot of sense.

On top of the Rainbow Six element, which refers to the counter-terrorist group that the series is based around, and Siege referencing the actual sieging element of the core gameplay, the X side of the big update both pays homage to the anniversary of the tactical shooter and a very common gameplay element too.

In an interview with creative director Alexander Karpazis, which you can watch below with localised subtitles, he explains the reasoning behind the X as the following:

"That's a great question because it can actually stand for a couple of things. We felt it worked on a number of levels. First, in our game, we have barricades everywhere with the X. For us, this is the X factor that stood out as being something that represents the game, a piece of gameplay that is true, and we wanted to kind of highlight that there's a big change coming and so we're putting an X behind it to make sure everybody knows. But the real and the most important reason is this is our 10th anniversary. So this is the Roman numeral for number 10, making a defining evolution milestone for us for the next 10 years. And so that's why you see Siege X right now."

Rainbow Six: Siege X arrives on PC and consoles on June 10.