Microsoft took a bit of a gamble by bringing PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds to the Xbox One. That gamble appears to have paid off, though, as the company announced more than 1 million copies were sold in the first 48 hours of the battle royale shooter’s release despite some technical issues as expected with an Xbox Game Preview release. Microsoft has started a promotion to give the game away for free with every Xbox One X sold through the end of 2017.
PUBG has already sold over 25 million copies for PC on Steam, so there was some question on how well it would sell on the console, especially with the free Fortnite: Battle Royale as an alternative. The game exploded out of the gate following its release to the Xbox Game Preview program with over one million copies sold.
Developer Bluehole has its work cut out for it, however. PUBG released with poor performance on both the Xbox One and Xbox One X. A Digital Foundry analysis of the game on both consoles found performance dipping well below 30 frames per second (fps) often. Additionally, the textures on the older console are quite muddy and neither have superb draw distances.
This shaky performance is not terribly surprising, as PUBG’s game map is huge and also has to support up to 100 players running, driving, shooting, and dying. This can cause issues on even a middle of the road gaming PC, so it is not shocking the initial release of the Xbox One version is a bit shaky at the moment. Bluehole and its partners at Microsoft will continue to work on the game’s performance while it is in Xbox Game Preview.
One tip to improve performance players have discovered already was shared to the PUBG Reddit forum yesterday by a user called kiwigreen69. Xbox One owners should go to their settings and turn the Game DVR off for the game. Users are reporting a substantially better framerate as a result.
Xbox One X Promotion
Those interested in purchasing an Xbox One X console now through December 31, 2017, will also receive a free copy of PUBG. This promotion is live now at the Microsoft Store as well as various physical and online retailers.