If you would have asked me a few months ago, I never would have guessed that the “battle royale" genre popularized by Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) on PC would be the Next Big Thing™ in the mobile space, but here we are. Alongside games like Guns Royale and the soft-launched Bullet Strike: Battlegrounds, NetEase has THREE different PUBG-likes on mobile in Survivor Royale, Knives Out, and Rules of Survival. And earlier this week we learned that PUBG Corp, the company that makes the actual Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, was partnering up with Tencent to bring the game to China on both desktop and mobile. Well today Tencent unveiled the first look at the mobile PUBG, and then unveiled the first look at a second mobile PUBG. Yes, multiple mobile PUBG games from Tencent, too. The videos of both games were posted to Sina Weibo, which is like China’s version of Twitter, and I have absolutely no idea how to embed those types of videos. So instead I’ll embed the tweets where we found the vids, courtesy of Daniel Ahmad on Twitter.
Here it is.
The official reveal trailer for PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUND MOBILE developed by Tencent's Timi Studio. https://t.co/uF5U9McDGa pic.twitter.com/6uoT0ZdKge
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 1, 2017
But wait!
That's not all!
Tencent will also release another PLAYER UNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE game for mobile.
That's right. Two PUBG Mobile games!
This one is more in the vein of the original PC game. Trailer belowhttps://t.co/UOIG6TT5uc pic.twitter.com/fZq6h8FH04
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 1, 2017
Are all these companies just hoping to have an actual battle royale to see which mobile PUBG-like will reign supreme? Sure seems like it! As Ahmad points out in a follow-up tweet, the first mobile PUBG is developed by the Tencent TIMI Studio, and the second is developed by Lightspeed & Quantum Studio, and both games are developed in Unreal Engine 4. Also the first game has a slightly different spin on PUBG with naval battles and a more “arcade" feel, while the second game is more faithful to the regular desktop PUBG. Neither has been confirmed to release outside of China, but I’d eat my hat if the somehow didn’t given the massive success of Rules of Survival and Co. We’ll continue following the saga of mobile battle royales and will bring you any additional news as it all plays out.
