Tom Clancy's The Division was one of the best selling new IPs released in this console generation. Now, almost exactly three years after its March 2016 launch, it will receive a sequel on March 15th, 2019.
Speaking to GamesIndustry, David Polfeldt (Managing Director at Massive Entertainment) suggested that while many players of The Division will be prompted to check out the sequel, the two games could be both supported going forward.
It's been three years between The Division and Division 2. I think there's a lot of interest in trying a similar type of mechanic but in a new way. I'm pretty sure people are curious about the new one.
Part of me thinks maybe The Division should remain live and The Division 2 is an alternative path for some people. I don't know what will happen, I think we need to remain very open-minded about that.
To further that point, a Ubisoft spokesperson added that The Division will be supported "long-term", which makes sense if the existing player base doesn't fully migrate to the second installment.
Polfeldt also said that to the studio's surprise, The Division doesn't seem to be impacted by competitor's new releases. In fact, the game is still growing to this day.
I was expecting to see more of an impact on our player base. It's one of the things that has surprised me with The Division: people play a lot - in fact, we have a larger player base now than we had six months ago. We're not particularly impacted by what other games are doing - that's been a bit of a surprise to me, because I would have expected that when something huge launches, obviously players play more than one game so I was expecting to see more ups and downs in the player base. But it's growing - it's a mystery to me, but it's working out quite well.
Check out the Gamescom 2018 trailer below.