PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, despite the mouthful of a name, skyrocketed to the top of Steam’s Top Seller charts shortly after its release and has not looked back since. There are other games in the genre, such as The Culling and H1Z1, but none have taken off on the level PUBG has.
Although the game is still just in early access, it seems like there is no end to the popularity, and fans are clamoring for a PUBG PS4 version. An any given time of the day you can check Steam and likely find hundreds of thousands of players playing this game. It is also one of Twitch’s most streamed games and has become a delight to watch due to its unpredictability.
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With all that said it should come as no surprise that PUBG coming to Xbox One is a big deal. The game was unveiled during Microsoft’s E3 press conference earlier this year and is arguably the biggest title coming to the console later this year – if it is coming this year. The game will be joining the Preview Program is a similar vein as Ark: Survival Evolved and The Long Dark did before it. The game has some performance issues even on high-end PCs so it will be interesting to see what kind of performance to expect on the less powerful Xbox One. Microsoft will have its upgraded and beefier Xbox One X on the market by the time this game is out so it might make things a little easier in terms of performance. We’ll just have to wait and see.
All of that is fine and dandy but what about PS4 players? Is PUBG giving them the shaft in this situation? Let’s take a look at what we know.
We know that Microsoft is publishing the Xbox One version of the game and PUBG’s developer Bluehole has a good relationship with the software giant. Mike Ybarra, Microsoft’s Vice President of Xbox and Windows platform, spoke a little about that relationship in an interview with Digital Trends.
The Bluehole/Microsoft relationship right now is an incredible positive. They’re obviously the biggest game, period, out there right now–eight million copies in four months, a lot of good momentum for them.
Now that we’re publishing the Xbox version of it, there’s people on my team and marketing resources that have opened up for Bluehole. We have a number of engineers helping them optimize for Xbox–both the Xbox One version, and the Xbox X version, in terms of the enhancements that they’ll bring to the title.
I think that it’s the standard partnership that we do with developers on specific titles when we really want to work together to bring something amazing across, and that’s a great title from a Windows and Xbox standpoint […]. I love it–I think they’re an awesome developer. We’ve known Brandon for a long time from the modes that he’s been doing, so it’s working out super well for us.
When the game was announced for Xbox it was dubbed as a Console Launch Exclusive. That wording suggests that it may be available on Microsoft’s console first but then may find its way to another one. In an interview with Eurogamer, Ybarra was pressed on whether the game will remain an Xbox One exclusive or not.
“We’re publishing it on Xbox and it’s a console launch exclusive,” said Ybarra. “For anything else – we don’t like to answer on behalf of developers, so you’d have to ask Bluehole. I’ve got a large portion of my team working with them to optimize it and their [Bluehole] focus is entirely on the PC and Xbox, period, to get that done.”
It sounds like working with Microsoft will allow the game to come to consoles faster. By focusing on just one platform, bug testing, optimization and other things of that nature will go much more smoothly. A PS4 version has never been directly ruled out by any of the parties involved which leaves us to believe that it’s only a matter of time before it happens. The playerbase on PS4 is much larger when compared to Xbox One so it just makes sense for this wildly popular game to be available everywhere it can be.
@DestinLegarie @Xbox Yes. This partnership is about allowing our dev team to solely focus on Xbox & PC development and bring PUBG to Xbox players faster.
The biggest shred of hope for PS4 players is the fact that Microsoft is publishing the game on their console. The same thing happened with Rise of the Tomb Raider and that title ended up transitioning to PC and PS4 a while after launch. Microsoft likely needed a heavy hitter to carry their new console through the holiday season and they went for the home run with PlayerUnknown’s Battleground.
This doesn’t mean we need Sony to step up and publish the game on the PS4 but we can all but guarantee Microsoft won’t be doing it.
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PUBG PS4 Version: Will It Ever Happen? (Updated!)