BrendanGreene
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PlayerUnknown believes ‘PUBG’ doesn’t need to beat ‘Fortnite’
Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene is in an unenviable position at the moment. His namesake game, PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds was the surprise hit of 2017, going from being an obscure work-in-progress game in Steam's Early Access section to racking up over $60 million in sales in mere months, averaging 2 million daily players on PC and getting a console port via the Xbox One -- all before it hit version 1.0. By all accounts, it looked like the game's continued success was guaranteed. Then Fortnite: Battle Royale happened. This week, Fortnite developer Epic Games announced that in just nine months time, its free-to-play spin on battle royale had accrued 125 million players. (Weeks earlier, PUBG's parent company sued Epic for alleged copyright violations.) But Fortnite isn't the only competition for PUBG. Giants of the FPS world like Call of Duty and Battlefield have announced they're joining the fray, and others will surely follow. Greene couldn't talk about the pending lawsuit, for obvious legal reasons, but when I spoke to him at E3 this week he was candid about the competition and his team's plans to differentiate PUBG from everyone else. Oh and to get this out of the way up front, don't expect PUBG to go free-to-play any time soon. Greene said that the team hadn't discussed it "at all." This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
As ‘PUBG’ finally exits beta, its creators look to the future
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) has been this year's biggest surprise. Since launching on Steam Early Access in late March, the game, which conceptually started life as a DayZ mod, has picked up 25 million players on PC, not to mention a marketing and publishing deal from Microsoft for an Xbox One version. This week, version 1.0 arrives on Steam, gaining a second map and new instant replay feature in the process. But for PUBG Corp CEO Chang Han Kim, even though the game is losing its beta status, work is far from finished. "When we first started this project and thought of the Early Access model, we never took it as a model where you start developing a game, you complete it, you ship it out and then be done with it," Kim said through a translator. "As long as we have fans out there playing our game, it will never be complete."
'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' arrives on Xbox One December 12th
For Xbox One owners, the wait to play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) will end December 12th. The battle royale game consistently racks up 2 million daily players on Steam, and in just over a month it will transition to the Xbox Game Preview program as a work in progress, with studio Bluehole leaning on players to help guide the game's development. "We can use it like Steam Early Access where we can develop on console with the community, and that's going to be really essential -- in our view -- for getting a really great version on console," creator Brendan Greene told Engadget.
'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' official launch pushed back
Just a couple of days after guaranteeing that his popular online shooter would be officially released within six months of its Early Access preview, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene is backing off of that promise. Brendan Greene (to RockPaperShotgun): People tell us we're not going to be out of early access in six months; challenge accepted. I can guarantee you, six or seven months and we're out of early access. It's the team. It's a matter of honour, you know? We will finish this game in six months.
