In the start of 2017, the official publishing rights of the mainstream survival shooter, PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG) were acquired by Microsoft. Courtesy the Xbox Game Preview Program, it was recently revealed that the PUBG would be released on 12th of December of this year, fulfilling its promise of releasing it during this year for the Xbox.
It necessarily means that since in the gaming industry many games are unfinished while they are released, so the PC version is not expected to be the final version of the game.
A platform for around a 100 people who parachute onto a location, the competitive shooter game PUBG allows these people to take down cities and towns for the sake of acquiring heavy weapons, armor, and several other in-game valuable stuff.
Much like what happened in Hunger Games, it is pretty similar in the sense that you must survive till the end, since the map keeps shrinking for you, causing people to engage in battle at some time. Through a beta program, the game has sold more than 8 million copies on the Steam platform.
Overtaking a game like Dota is not easy but PUBG was able to do that when it took over in August. This made PUBG the most played game in August. There were simultaneously more than 800,000 gamers playing the game. It broke another of its record by skyrocketing to a million players at the same time, last month.
For the non-Xbox ones i.e. mainly the PlayStation 4 users, the Microsoft is still blank on the game’s release for the platform and this is the case when Microsoft used the current week’s Paris Game Event as the platform to inform people about the game’s release on Xbox, while the event is mainly dominated by Sony. There was further good news too that the PUBG’s version 1.0 would be available by Late December for the hardcore PC gamers.
This surely implies that roadmaps for both the platforms, Xbox, and PC, would have different roadmaps, even though they were being developed over the same time. According to the CEO of PUBG Corp, “Various Xbox One features, and functionality will change and come online over time just like they have on PC, with our goal being to have both versions align to each other as soon as possible.”
To make it seem more exclusive for Xbox, three limited edition cosmetic packs are also going to be released by Microsoft. For now, there is no news about what the price of these packs is going to be ,or that when would they be available but one thing is for sure that they are supposed to be a limited time thing only as “there are no plans to feature any in-game purchases in the Xbox Game Preview version.”
Bluehole, the PUBG developed, has though voiced their concerns about the growing competition this game is facing, despite the fact they are gearing up for an Xbox One release. There is much that seems similar between the PUBG and the Epic Games title dubbed Fortnite and this what concerns the PUBG developer. Coming into the market for the first time as just a sandbox survival game, Fortnite, implemented a new battle royale mode trying to catch on the popularity of the PUBG.
According to Bluehole, PUBG is being referenced by Epic, “in the promotion of Fortnite to their community and in communications with the press.”