Ubisoft's new uPlay+ subscription is a tactical move that fits perfectly with its service-oriented business. Here's how uPlay+ will help transform and solidify Ubisoft as a digital-focused publisher.

Ubisoft has made a radical transformation over the last few years. All of its games are now sprawling, evolving experiences focused around engagement, live content, and microtransactions, creating a business that continually makes money long after its games are sold. Last fiscal year, Ubisoft raked in $1.56 billion from digital, or about 68.8% of its total yearly earnings, and $721 million from microtransactions.

Infusing live services into all of its biggest games (even singleplayer titles like Assassin's Creed are now hybridized into live games) was just the beginning. Now with uPlay+, we're seeing the real fruits of Ubisoft's plans.

Want to play Remedy's new ultra-weird Twin Peaks-meets-The-X-Files game? You'll need a somewhat decent PC.

Today the Epic Games Store revealed Control's PC spec requirements for both minimum and recommended settings. To play Control, you can't skate away with lower-end hardware: you'll need at least an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 GPU or AMD RX 580 (or equivalent), an Intel i5-7500 CPU or an AMD Ryzen 3 1300X CPU, and 8GB of RAM. To use ray-tracing you'll need at least an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060. Then again a lot of gamers already run a GTX 1060. According to Steam's recent hardware survey, the GTX 1060 is the most popular GPU for gamers (about 15% of active users have one, or around 13.5 million).

Recommended specs are more demanding, of course: Remedy wants you to have an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or an AMD Radeon VII, Intel Core i5-8600K or an AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 16GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti for ray-tracing.

On the heels of a successful campaign test run, 343i's next closed beta will concentrate on Halo: Reach's Firefight mode.

Halo: Reach is a huge game that offers something for everyone: it has solo or split-screen campaign for offline gamers, campaign matchmaking for team play, Firefight solo or online play with others, custom Firefight, custom games, and an array of PVP matchmaking options. To get the full game running on PC, all these moving parts will get their own testing phases. First we had a very limited campaign test where less than 1,000 people got in, and now we're getting Firefight matchmaking.

343i confirmed the next flight is all about Firefight, aka the best mode ever invented, and is slated to launch later this month. It's an arcade-style survival gauntlet that pits you against teeming hordes of enemies that progressively get stronger, complete with vehicles and huge chaotic sandbox maps. Toss in some pre-defined loadouts for team-based action and you have a recipe for complete carnage-inducing awesomeness.

Xbox One backwards compatibility is a huge motivator to adopting the system. Find out if your old-school game is supported with this handy list.

Over 600 Xbox 360 and original Xbox games are playable on the Xbox One, including classics like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Morrowind, Fallout: New Vegas, and a ton of Fable games. Of course there's lots, lots more

Microsoft recently stopped adding new games to the list, so the following games are set in stone as the full backward compatibility selection. All of the games below will also be playable on the next-gen Project Scarlett console (as well as all Xbox One games), bridging four generations' worth of titles.

Mortal Kombat fans will be able to rejoice at the most recent news regarding the upcoming Mortal Kombat Movie that is soon to be released.

If you didn't know, Adelaide will soon be home to its biggest movie production ever, the upcoming Mortal Kombat live-action movie. The movie is being directed by Simon McQuid and it will be bringing a fresh new take to Mortal Kombat. Recent news has now surfarced regarding the movies rating and according to Greg Russo, a screenwriter for the movie, the Mortal Kombat Movie will be R-rated and will feature the games' iconic fatalities.

Russo said on Twitter in the above comment, "Since it's already been stated by other members of the team, I'm gonna put this one to bed. MK WILL be R-Rated and for the first time EVER, FATALITIES will FINALLY be on the big screen (and no I'm not gonna say which ones) You'll just have to wait for the movie & see!!! ;)" The last news we heard about the Mortal Kombat Movie is that Fast & Furious 6's Joe Taslim has been selected to play Sub-Zero. We are now waiting on who will play Sub-Zero's counterpart, Scorpion. The Mortal Kombat Movie is expected to launch in theaters on March 5th, 2021.

Netflix has decided to take a step into the suicide prevention area by removing one of suicide scenes from one of this most popular TV shows.

Netflix has taken to their official Twitter page to announce an update for 13 Reasons Why. According to the post, Netflix has "heard from many young people that 13 Reasons Why encouraged them to start conversations about difficult issues like depression and suicide and get help - often for the first time. As we prepare to launch Season 3 later this summer, we've been mindful about the ongoing debate around the show."

"So on the advice of medical experts, including Dr. Christine Moutier, Chief Medical Officer at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, we've decided with creator Brian Yorkey and the producers of 13 Reasons Why to edit the scene in which Hannah takes her own life from Season 1."

If you didn't know already, Amazon is currently hosting their own holiday called 'Prime Day'. Prime Day ushers in a range of new sales for consumers to enjoy, but not everyone has taken a liking - as many strikes have formed by Amazon employee's.

This is the second year in a row that Amazon employee's have decided to strike on Prime Day. Many workers located in Germany are refusing to work over what has been called unfair pay, and Minnesota workers are striking over unsafe working conditions. These are the only Amazon workers striking though, due to Amazon owning Twitch.tv some video game streamers have also decided to strike.

Adam "Yoman5" Hernandez, a competitive Magic: The Gathering streamer has decided not to stream for the next two days to show solidarity to the Amazon employee's who have it hard. "I think it's really simple to show solidarity to people who have it hard. A two-day strike did wonders already over at Polygon, and while that's a much smaller affair, a strike is really disruptive to the company's production and can force the company to actually address concerns. A boycott in solidarity with the strike can hit Amazon in the only place they care: sales numbers."

Blizzard are continuing to combat cheaters in Overwatch, and while most games that are played don't contain cheaters the ones that do will now be shut down upon detection.

In the most recent Overwatch developers update, Blizzard Overwatch icon Jeff Kaplan sat down to discuss the more harsh punishments being introduced into the game. According to Kaplan, "the next evolution of cheat detection" will be that once the game detects that a player is cheating it will automatically shut down the entire game.

Players that are not cheating will not be penalized in any means, whether or not they are on the team with the cheater or not. This means that for competitive matches players won't have to be concerned with loosing SR if it appears there is a cheater on the other team. Blizzard seem to be cracking down on cheaters in Overwatch and Kaplan says that "very harsh actions are happening" to anyone who Blizzard finds to be breaking the rules.

As America and NASA come closer to the 50th anniversary celebration of the Moon landing, NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine shined a light on what the next space-program will be.

Bridenstine was on Face The Nation and was iasked about how NASA plans on getting to the Moon within the next 5 years. According to Bridenstine, "There's two risks. There's technical risk and there's political risk. We would be on the moon right now if it weren't for the political risk. We would be on Mars, quite frankly, by now had it not been for the political risk." Combining into the 'political risk' is the other half the equation which is funding, which Bridenstine also says that was a massive issue.

Since the announcement by the Vice President for a Moon mission in the next 5 years, NASA has recently received the funding necessary to make this mission possible. Donald Trump recently said on Twitter that the Moon mission should not be focused on, and rather that Mars should be America's next goal.

Respawn is using an interesting method of annoying cheaters and spammers in the super-famous Apex Legends, with teh developer working on a system that would matchmake cheaters and spammers into matches with other cheaters and spammers.

The developer is tapping into machine learning technology for the next level in detecting and banning cheaters and spammers in the game, as well as doubling to stop cheaters altogether. It seems that Respawn has already got an algorithm in Apex Legends that pairs cheaters and spammers through matchmaking so they play with each other, and not ruin the game for the rest of the server.

Apex Legends, like most popular games, has cheaters. In the Ranked mode of Apex Legends it creates a big problem, and it's something games like Overwatch experience with its similar game modes. Blizzard has, in the last 24 hours, said that it is working on a new system that if it detecting cheating it would automatically end the match. Blizzard won't punish the other players in the game for the abrupt end of the match, it will only punish the cheater.