PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) has pretty much revolutionised the Battle Royale genre as we know it today. The game has seen an extensive and rewarding life on PC, and has been available on Xbox Game Preview for some time. Now PUBG Corp. reports that PUBG on Xbox One will graduate to a full release in September, 2018.

The wildly popular battle royale shooter hit Xbox One as part of Xbox Game Preview in December 2017. Since then, the game has grown in popularity and has received extensive updates and fixes to bring it on par with the PC release. The game, which very recently got the second map, Miramar, is set to release on 4 September 2018, complete with the third map, Sanhok, and a brand-new Warmode.

Microsoft flew to the PUBG homeland, Korea, where they went to Seoul and visited the PUBG Corp. offices. Inside Xbox, an official Microsoft initiative and informative web series, sat down with the PUBG developers to discuss the creation of the game and how the Xbox One version has grown since its debut.

In the video above, head honcho Brendan Greene and a few leading developers sit down and talk about what a journey the Xbox One version has been. They mention how ambitious it was to bring an early access port to the console for anyone to play, and that it required eighteen updates just to get things to where it is today.

Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb pays careful attention to mention that the soon-to-be-released 1.0 version of PUBG on Xbox One will by no means be the end for the game’s development. The developers go on to mention how version 1.0 is just a “stepping stone” of sorts. Greene explains that they consider 1.0 kind of “feature complete”, but that more work needs to be done.

According to PUBG Corp., the full release will see many new features come to the game. This includes performance improvements and bug fixes, and content additions like the aforementioned Sanhok map and the wildly popular Warmode.

Sanhok is the smallest map PUBG has seen to date. It spans a total of four square kilometres and seemingly has double the loot that its eight square kilometre siblings do. On Sanhok, the blue zone converges a lot faster, and red zones take up a lot more space. It is a smaller map that promises constant action.

Warmode, on the other hand, lets players duke it out in a very small play area surrounded by the blue zone. It is essentially a special event that PC players often see: players spawn, weapons in hand, and fatal shots are automatically counted as kill shots. Players also respawn every thirty seconds and get another chance to drop in and seek revenge. Warmode usually finishes when one player or team reaches the score goal, or when the time runs out.

In addition to the new mode and new map, the full release of PUBG on Xbox One will also feature a new in-game currency that players can gain by spending real money. This currency can, in turn, be exchanged for cosmetic items such as hoodies, weapon skins and parachute skins. Not a lot has been said about the new microtransactions, but I suspect that it will work in the same way that it does on PC: no pay-to-win, and purely cosmetic.

To top it off, Microsoft also announced that a limited edition PUBG Xbox One controller can be pre-ordered via its site for $70 USD. The Limited Edition PUBG controller features new trigger grips, which Microsoft says is exclusive to the controller. Both controllers also feature digital camo design with wear and tear aesthetic on the D-pad, PUBG logo on the battery lid, and stealth grey input buttons. The controllers will ship on 30 October 2018, not too long after the game officially goes 1.0 on Xbox One.

[Sources: The Verge, Xbox (official site)(1)(2), YouTube 1, YouTube 2]

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Junior Editor at Vamers. From Superman to Ironman; Bill Rizer to Sam Fisher and everything in-between, Edward loves it all. He is a Bachelor of Arts student and English Major specialising in Language and Literature. He is an avid writer and casual social networker with a flare for all things tech related.