Ubisoft Is Rebranding UPLAY+, Renaming It Ubisoft+

Tom Clancy 's Elite Squad ubisoft

At E3 last year, Ubisoft announced that they would be throwing their hat into the subscription service ring to join the likes of EA Play, PS Now and Xbox Game Pass with their subscription service, UPLAY+, offering subscribers across multiple platforms access to legacy Ubisoft content. Now, a year and some change following the service's launch, Ubisoft is re-branding and re-launching their answer to the gaming subscription service.

A couple of weeks ago when Amazon announced Amazon Luna, their subscription-based streaming service, they used Ubisoft as a specific example of one of the channels for players to subscribe to, and now we know why. Announced via Ubisoft's blog, the service, now called Ubisoft+, will be launching in beta on Amazon's streaming service first on November 10 alongside its release on PC, with a launch on Google Stadia to come at a later date.

While the French publisher and developer has provided a new and updated URL for their service's re-launch, the URL still redirects to the UPLAY+ website, rather than Ubisoft+.

The announcement that Ubisoft+ would favor streaming services like Stadia and Luna is no surprise, as Ubisoft is generally one of the first publishers to jump in on new platforms and hardware. Last week, they even launched an exclusive demo for their upcoming game, Immortals: Fenyx Rising on Google Stadia.

While this news of Ubisoft seemingly doubling down on streaming bodes well for the future of the medium, don't forget that 2020 has been a year of reckoning across the games industry for a variety of reasons, but no example has been as extreme and alarming as that of Ubisoft's internal struggle. While the initial story of mass abuse broke back in the summer, the story has seemingly been ever-evolving as more and more Ubisoft employees, like Beyond Good and Evil 2 director, Michel Ancel, leave the company for mysterious reasons. As the worldwide publisher continues to push through the controversy with faux transparency, ignoring the ongoing situation at every opportunity in their marketing beats, don't let the flashing lights and novelty distract from the malpractice.

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PlayStation is Still Planning for More Acquisitions in the Future

ps5

With the PS5 already flying off of the proverbial shelf, it doesn't sound as though Sony will be resting on its laurels when it comes to growing in the upcoming generation.

In a new conversation with Reuters, PlayStation President Jim Ryan said that the company is still looking to grow over time in the form of various mergers or acquisitions. Ryan specified that it would be looking to grow in an organic manner "where we can bolster our in-house capability with selective M&A that might be possible."

In recent years, Sony has continued to express that it has a desire to grow through acquisitions, but it hasn't made as many moves compared the company's closest competitor in Microsoft. The newest studio to join Sony's larger PlayStation Studios label has been that of Insomniac Games, which was purchased in 2019. The developer is soon set to release Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales on both PS5 and PS4 next month.

It remains to be seen what the future will hold for Sony, but statements in recent months make it sound as though the PlayStation brand will continue to be aggressive in the coming years. Despite having so much success in the PS4 era, Sony would likely be wise to continue to grow its first-party studio presence. Even if that means establishing new internal studios rather than outright purchasing those that currently exist, it seems likely that PlayStation will be changing quite in the near term.

As for the PS5, the next-gen console is due out next month in the United States and select other regions on November 12, with the rest of the world to follow the week after on November 19.

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PS5 — Jim Ryan Says You're Probably Out of Luck on Launch Day if You Don't Have the Console Pre-Ordered

If you don't have the PS5 pre-ordered at this point in time, it sounds like your prospects of getting the next-gen this holiday season are going to be pretty rough.

In a new conversation with Reuters, PlayStation head Jim Ryan has said that the demand for the PS5 has been staggering, to say the least. Ryan stated that the demand for the PS5 when pre-orders went live was "very, very considerable," and expressed that Sony is doing all it can to manufacture as many units of the hardware as it can in the coming months. "It may well be that not everybody who wants to buy a PS5 on launch day will be able to find one," Ryan expressed.

Despite previously saying that there would be more PS5 consoles available at launch compared to the release of the PS4 back in 2013, the reason why consoles are said to be so sparse this holiday season comes with how high demand has been. Ryan also confirmed that Sony pre-sold as many PS5 units in the United States in its first 12 hours of availability as it did in the first 12 weeks of the PS4's pre-order cycle. Those totals are staggering, to say the very least.

All in all, the PS5 sounds like it's already poised to be a rousing success in not only the United States, but around the world. With a launch lineup that includes games like Demon's Souls and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, prospective purchasers of the platform won't have to wait long to get their hands on some must-have titles.

The PS5 is set to launch in a little over two weeks and will release on November 12.

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Critical Role is Launching a New Publishing Company for Tabletop Games

For the past several years, the long-running Critical Role has proven to be one of the internet's most popular destinations for all things Dungeons & Dragons with its cast of well-known voice actors including Laura Bailey, Travis Willingham, and Ashley Johnson. The group's ongoing campaigns and podcasts have sparked new life into the hobby of tabletop roleplaying games, and now the group is expanding even further by publishing upcoming games of their own.

Critical Role has officially announced that the company will be launching a new publishing division devoted to tabletop games called Darrington Press. According to the official announcement, Darrington Press will be an extension of Critical Role's love of tabletop and roleplaying games, with the company being headed by Ivan Van Norman, who has previously worked on producing and developing tabletop games and was a producer on Wil Wheaton's online series TableTop. Matthew Mercer will also serve as one of the heads of the company as its creative advisor.

A few of the games coming from Darrington Press in the future were officially revealed in the company's announcement blog post. The first game from Darrington Press is called Uk'otoa, which is "a tactical game of semi-cooperative card play" between warring factions of sailors on the high seas. The game will be arriving in Q1 2021, followed by three other upcoming games scheduled to release throughout the rest of 2021: Critical Role Adventures, Syndicult, and Guardians of Matrimonia.

You can check out an image of Uku'otoa below:

Critical Role started broadcasting their first campaign in 2015 on Twitch, and since then the series has taken off in popularity on YouTube, through their podcasts, and in live appearances and specials. Since then, the series has also expanded to different mediums including graphic novels, campaign books, art books, and an upcoming animated series on Amazon Prime Video.

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Insta-Forum: What Is Your Favorite PS2 Game of All-Time?

PlayStation 2

With the PS5 on the horizon in just over two weeks, the upcoming launch of the next-gen system isn't the only recent major milestone for Sony. Alongside the PS5's release, this week also marks a big moment for another one of Sony's legacy systems, the PS2, with the console hitting its 20th anniversary after its debut in 2000.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the PS2's release in North America (it hit 20 years in Japan this past March), and in the years since its release, it is still a record-setting system that defined a generation. To date, the PS2 is still the best-selling console of all-time with over 155 million systems sold worldwide, and was the home to a number of classic titles like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Grand Theft Auto III, and thousands of other games across its lifetime.

For our latest Insta-Forum, we're looking back at the library of Sony's iconic system and asking the DualShockers community: What is your all-time favorite PS2 game? What games are first to come to mind when you think of it? What games did you never get the chance to play on the system? Let us know your picks in the comments below.

Personally, Shadow of the Colossus is always a title that I will hold near and dear to my heart, along with tons of other classics that I played on the PS2 like Devil May Cry 3, Ico, and the Grand Theft Auto titles. There are a few series that I missed out on during the PS2 era; my biggest blindspots are probably platformers like Jak & Daxter, Sly Cooper, and Ratchet & Clank. But I can't really argue with the fact that the PS2 had some incredible games to play over the years, especially thinking back now on its 20th anniversary.

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Godzilla is Stomping His Way Into Fall Guys With a New Skin

Fall Guys Season 2

This may be Fall Guys' biggest collaboration yet. The goofy battle-royale has featured some great cross-over skins recently; Sonic has shown up along with Portal 2's Peabody and Pedro from My Friend Pedro. But this is something else, a cross-over on a monstrous scale. The king of monsters, Godzilla, is the next character you'll be able to dress your bean boy up as in Fall Guys.

Announced in yet another (very spicy) tweet, as all Fall Guys announcements are, Godzilla isn't looking half as threatening as he does in the movies. Especially not when the blank, doofy face of a Fall Guy is right below his gaping maw. There's no word yet on how many crowns players will have to earn to dress up as the king kaiju, but for what it's worth, the tweet says to "start getting your crowns together now."

For me, there couldn't be a more fitting character to dress my Fall Guy up as. For those Fall Guys players that believe it's a peaceful, respectful game, this is your opportunity to be a monster. Grab your fellow competitors right before they jump off a ledge, hold them up at the top of Slime Climb, do whatever monstrous things you can imagine because now you can dress up as one. Let that inner monster rampage.

It's also fitting that Godzilla is the one added to Fall Guys now: the game recently launched its medieval-themed second season. Now it has a big evil lizard to go along with its new knight and princess costumes and castle-themed maps.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Has Again Been Delayed, This Time by Only Three Weeks

Cyberpunk 2077

Well, we were told that there wouldn't be any more delays for Cyberpunk 2077 before its November 19 launch date. It turns out, that will no longer hold true.

Cyberpunk 2077 has indeed been delayed for the third time this year, but this newest pushback is the shortest of the bunch. The highly-anticipated RPG will still launch before the end of 2020 and is now slated to arrive on December 10.

CD Projekt Red said in an accompanying statement that the main reason for this 21-day delay is due to shipping the game across a vast number of platforms all at once. Not only is Cyberpunk 2077 releasing on current-gen hardware, but it's also coming to next-gen consoles in PS5 and Xbox Series S/X to go along with Stadia. In total, CD Projekt needs to finalize nine different versions of the game all while still working from home.

The studio also mentioned the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 recently went gold, as well, meaning that further delays shouldn't need to come about. However, it was clarified that simply going gold doesn't mean that the game itself has finished being worked on. "On the contrary, this is the time where many improvements are being made which will then be distributed via a Day 0 patch," CD Projekt heads Adam Badowski and Marcin Iwinski wrote. "This is the time period we undercalculated."

The news of another delay is surely a shocking one to many, but I imagine those who will be knee-deep in next-gen releases next month won't be too crestfallen. Considering how packed the month already is with titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Demon's Souls, and many others, the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 will largely now have the entirety of December to itself sounds great to me.

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FIFA 21 Comes to PS5 and Xbox Series X in Early December

If there's one thing you can typically rely on with next-gen console releases, it's that there will be plenty of sports games available on each platform from the get-go. While that remains true to some degree with the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, the world's most popular sports franchise won't be making its way over to the new hardware until a little bit later this time around.

Electronic Arts announced today that FIFA 21 is indeed coming to both PS5 and Xbox Series X, but it won't be released until nearly a month after the consoles themselves hit store shelves. FIFA 21 will release on December 4 for all next-gen platforms and will feature "blazing fast load times, deferred lighting and rendering, enhanced animation technology, off-ball humanisation, and more." EA has said that more specifics of the new iterations of the game will be highlighted in the coming weeks.

While this year's entry won't be landing on next-gen consoles until a few weeks later than usual, fortunately, those that already own the game on current platforms won't need to pay for the upgrade. FIFA 21 will be a "dual entitlement" title from EA, which means that you can upgrade your PS4 version to PS5 and Xbox One iteration to Xbox Series X/S for no extra charge. Considering not all publishers have been doing this form of forward compatibility, it's good to see that EA is at least allowing it.

Despite being so popular around the globe, we were left pretty underwhelmed with FIFA 21 so far this season. Hopefully, the changes on next-gen consoles will improve the experience later this year.

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Alien: The Roleplaying Game Now Available on Roll20 and Digital Tabletop Platforms

Tabletop games are no stranger to horror-themed experiences, with many classics like Betrayal at House on the Hill and Arkham Horror being played for years. If you're looking to have another horror-focused experience with your tabletop group with Halloween around the corner, Alien: The Roleplaying Game is making its way to digital tabletop platforms so you can (virtually) try to avoid the Xenomorph together.

Publisher Free League Publishing has announced that Alien: The Roleplaying Game is now available on digital tabletop platforms including Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds. The digital release of the game on these platforms includes the core rulebook–which spans 392 pages–and also brings over the game's two sequel scenarios, Chariot of the Gods and Destroyer of Worlds.

You can take a look at the official trailer for the base game below:

Alien: The Roleplaying Game first released last year from Free League Publishing, and adapts the iconic movie franchise into a tabletop roleplaying experience. Much like the classic Ridley Scott film, Alien focuses on players trying to work together to outlast the Xenomorph and escape in one piece. The RPG features cinematic play that offers "pre-made scenarios" designed for one-shots or single session play, while also featuring campaign play for more extended, continuous play with friends in an ongoing storyline.

For those unfamiliar with the platforms, Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds are both popular digital tabletop platforms that feature the ability the ability to play tabletop RPGs online with customizable maps, player chat, dice rolling systems, and more. Both platforms feature an array of officially-licensed tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulu, and more, with both platforms bringing Alien: The Roleplaying Game into the fold.

Alien: The Roleplaying Game is available now on Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds, and you can also pick up the physical version of the game from Free League Publishing.

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Alien: Isolation Documentary Looks Back at the Making of the Cult Horror Hit

Alien: Isolation

Originally released in 2014, Alien: Isolation proved that an Alien survival horror game could work after the failure of its predecessor, the much-maligned Aliens: Colonial Marines. However, while the horror game proved to be a success for Creative Assembly and SEGA, a new documentary explores the trials and difficulties that the developers had to go through to bring their vision of being chased by the Xenomorph to life.

Noclip has released a new documentary that dives into the making of Alien: Isolation, with the documentary video featuring numerous interviews with the developers behind the game. Specifically, the documentary explores many of the changes and initial ideas that Creative Assembly had for the game, and how the project almost didn't come to light due to the failure of Colonial Marines.

You can check out the full documentary from Noclip below:

Some of the most interesting facts revealed in the documentary is that initially, Creative Assembly developed its pitch for Isolation in secret after SEGA had first turned down their design document for an Alien survival horror game. Once the studio had created a "demo" of the experience that it would have in mind for (what would become) Isolation, SEGA greenlit the project and allowed it to move forward.

Additionally, the documentary also highlights how Isolation was first intended to be played from a third-person perspective, before the development team at Creative Assembly transitioned to first-person. The video showcases some glimpses of the game in a third-person perspective with protagonist Amanda Ripley, but the developers also shared their insights on how, ultimately, going with a first-person design allowed the game to be more immersive and intense.

Alien Isolation is available on PS4, Xbox One, PS3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, and Linux.

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