Despite a controversial start, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds—or, PUBG for short—has attracted over 3 million gamers on Xbox One, Microsoft reported today.
“Today, PUBG Corp. and Xbox are excited to share that through the end of 2017 the PUBG community on Xbox One has already grown to over three million players,” Microsoft general manager Aaron Greenberg writes. “It’s been awesome to see the excitement and passion on display from the Xbox community.”
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PUBG is a reimagining of the first-person shooter as an e-sport competition, a virtual version of the Hunger Games where competitors parachute onto an island, and then find weapons and other items and hunt each other down. You only get one shot: Once your character is killed, you’re out.
For long-time first-person shooter fans like myself, PUBG is strange, and the type of thing that would be a single game mode in a Call of Duty title, not the entire game. Also, the lack of variety is curious: The game has only a single level right now, though another is in the works.
PUBG is also always in perpetual beta, and it was released in unfinished form, first on the PC and then on Xbox One via the Xbox Game Preview program. The game is notable for its slow performance and middling graphics. And when it launched on Xbox One a month ago, it was widely criticized for amplifying these issues.
And yet it is also hugely popular, and many game reviewers have hailed it as the best game of 2017. So what do I know?
Anyway, Greenberg explains that PUBG will keep getting better on Xbox One this year, just as is the case on the PC.
“The team at PUBG Corp. is determined to continue to improve the in-game experience for PUBG’s growing and active community and have already released four updates since the game’s launch in Xbox Game Preview on December 12,” he explains. “You’ll continue to see regular updates roll out for PUBG on Xbox One such as this week’s addition of first-person support for solo, duo, and squads gameplay and the team is just getting started, with more updates planned that include additional game optimization and the new Miramar map.
Greenberg also notes that that Mixer will host a PUBG tips and tricks segment on January 16 at 6 pm ET that might be of interest to budding e-sport gamers.
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#237604"><em>In reply to infenit101:</em></a></blockquote><p>I would not even call PUBG a game. It is really a game mode, Battle Royale. It roots come from the many, many spin off's of games that were based on the Arma engine (slow, sluggish junk) like Dayz, Rust, and many more, most never getting past a Alpha or Beta. All great concepts all poorly optimized, full of cheaters on the PC and most just abandoned after some time.</p><p><br></p><p>PUBG took the most popular game mode from those games and has focused on it. I had hoped it would be better since it does not use the Arma engine, instead using the UR4 engine. Well in my experience even on a higher end PC it lags badly behind other AAA games like Battlefield 1, COD, Ghost Recon Wildlands and other shooting games. It has gotten better on the PC but still lags in terms of both optimization and graphics compared to other games.</p><p><br></p><p>I wish Dice would make a Battle Royale game with their BF engine and the destructible worlds they make.</p>