Ubisoft announces The Division free-to-play spin-off Heartland

Ubisoft has announced Tom Clancy's The Division: Heartland, a standalone free-to-play game due for PC, PlayStation and Xbox sometime vaguely in "2021-22".

It's being developed by Ghost Recon studio Red Storm Entertainment, and you can already register your interest in joining playtests.

Another The Division game is also in development for mobile, Ubisoft said, while its previously-announced The Division film starring Jessica Chastain and Jake Gyllenhaal, in development with Netflix, is also still on the cards. Finally, a The Division novel is on the way, with a story set post-The Division 2.

Back in March, Ubisoft said it was still planning future content for The Division 2 and that a major update for that game was due in late 2021 with the arrival of a new mode. In the meantime, The Division 2 is re-running previous seasons of content to keep things ticking over.

Today, Ubisoft clarified that franchise creator Massive Entertainment is being assisted on this update by Ubisoft Bucharest, presumably because the former now has other things on its plate (more on those below).

The Division franchise has reached over 40 million unique players since developer Massive Entertainment's first game arrived in March 2016.

Its sequel arrived in March 2019, while the release of its Warlords of New York expansion in March 2020 saw the game's highest monthly active users.

Massive is still working on its Avatar video game. Announced in 2017, it seems likely this will tie-in with James Cameron's long-delayed movie sequels.

Massive is also working on a new open-world Star Wars game, developed using The Division's Snowdrop engine and led by The Division 2 director Julian Gerighty.