Rainbow Six Mobile, the smartphone spin-off of Ubisoft’s popular shooter franchise based on the works of techno-thriller writer Tom Clancy, has already gained more than 17 million pre-orders depite only so far having a soft launch in Canada at the end of August and reaching Mexico on September 4.

That’s according to CEO Yves Guillemot who described the title as a “AAA mobile game" and revealed the numbers in a recent LinkedIn post. He also confirmed that the game will be rolling out to further soft-launch phases soon.

The Rainbow Six franchise has been a lynchpin of Ubisoft’s catalog, especially with the continued popularity of latest entry Rainbow Six Siege on consoles and PC. Rainbow Six games have come to diverge considerably from their more grounded military-sim origins, and have grown in popularity especially in esports arenas.

Ubisoft’s mobile success comes at a time when the company is struggling on other fronts, including reports of a botched attempt at acquisition stymied by the company’s unusual structure. However, the company also benefited from the acquisition of cloud gaming rights from Microsoft in the latest twist of the Activision Blizzard acquisition saga.

Ubisoft to make more of a move to mobile?

As the mobile market’s lucrative nature becomes more and more apparent to traditionally PC and console companies, Ubisoft has remained on the backfoot, so this startling number of pre-orders is certainly an encouraging sign for growth to come.

Success with Rainbow Six could precede a renewed interest in the market.