Numbers first: 5 million players in less than three months. On March 15, 2018, Microsoft and PUBG Corporation celebrated the milestone for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Xbox One, where the game had arrived on December 12, 2017.
The detail that makes the number more curious: PUBG was not even finished on the console. It ran through Xbox Game Preview, Microsoft’s early access program, which, translating the jargon, means a game sold in development, with frequent patches and known issues. The version itself ran at 30 frames per second on the console, a target of criticism at the time.
To celebrate, the team released a video for the community and an infographic with Xbox stats. Some of them: 4,959,356 “chicken dinners,” the game’s wins; 23,472,616 supply crates delivered; 41,146,932 deaths caused by the blue zone, the circle that closes in on the map; and 952,312 players eliminated by frying pan blows. No official data on the emotional state of the frying pan’s victims.
The gift was the PUBG5 jacket, an exclusive cosmetic item released to everyone who had the game and an activated character on Xbox One until 12:01 AM on March 22, 2018, Pacific time. The communication also recalled the ninth optimization patch, released on March 2, with tweaks to vehicles, sound effects and the matchmaking system, and confirmed the arrival of Miramar, the game’s second map, on the console.
What came next
PUBG left Game Preview on Xbox in September 2018, with the full release. On January 12, 2022, the game, by then renamed PUBG: Battlegrounds, became free on PC and consoles, with an optional premium account, Battlegrounds Plus, which unlocks ranked and custom matches.
Source: Xbox Wire, PUBG Corporation.
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