PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds emerged from the holidays with its Steam launch build, another pair of milestones under its belt and a largely successful transition to Xbox Live. But publisher Bluehole and developer PUBG Corporation say they still want to see Battlegrounds make the jump to PS4 and Switch at some point.
PUBG continues to shatter its own concurrent player records on Steam. More than 3 million players were logged into Battlegrounds at the game’s peak on Dec. 29, a staggering 50 percent increase from the 2 million concurrents celebrated back in October. Yes, as in two months ago. To put that in perspective, that’s more players than the other 99 games on Steam’s daily list of top games (by player count) combined . But those sorts of numbers are a bit easier to put up when your game sells more than 30 million copies in less than a year. They may be divided into two communities by the lack of cross-platform support, but the vast majority of the PUBG crowd is still playing the PC build. And that number will probably reach Grand Theft Auto V or Minecraft territory when the game’s previously announced mobile ports debut in China.
Those impressive numbers emboldened Bluehole. CEO Chang Han Kim, who you may remember from our PAX West interview, recently told InvenGlobal the company is still interested in bringing Battlegrounds to Sony and Nintendo’s latest platforms. Bluehole wants to see PUBG represented in other media too, like movies and cartoons, and Kim hopes the game eventually transforms into “a universal media franchise.” The chief executive believes Bluehole is only just beginning tap into global interest, pointing to Battlegrounds expansion of the PC and Xbox One communities in Japan. Both have traditionally struggled to compete with PlayStation products, even one-offs like the PSX, in the region.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is available on Steam. An incomplete console port is also available via the Xbox One Game Preview Program.
Be sure to check back with Player.One and follow Scott on Twitter for more PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds news in 2017 and as long as PUBG Corp. supports PUBG in the years ahead.
