As battle royale behemoth Playerunknown's Battlegrounds rolls out of Early Access on PC and launches on Xbox One, developer and publisher PUBG Corp has revealed the game has more than 30m players across both platforms.
At last official count, the game had sold 20m units, which was at the start of November. This means the title has sold more than ten million copies in about six weeks.
The game launched in March, making its first four million sales in three months. It reached eight million in another two before selling two million copies in the two weeks following Gamescom. Between the start of September and the start of November, another ten million people joined the title's playerbase.
Earlier in the year, the game ramped up to sell 1.5m copies a week; now it is selling close to two million copies each week. Buzz around the 1.0 launch, as well as the Xbox One release, has no doubt contributed to this acceleration in sales.
On average, the game has sold 1.3m copies each week over the 39 weeks since it launched.
That 100m player goal that creative director Brendan Greene outlined in the summer doesn't seem that farfetched now. If that wasn't enough, the game is now played by close to 3m people at any given time.
“The day has arrived,” said PUBG Corp CEO CH Kim.
“Nine months ago, we celebrated PUBG’s release into Early Access and began collaborating with our players to bring PUBG Corp.’s Battle Royale vision to life. Now we have a new milestone to celebrate: after a tremendously successful and instructive Early Access phase, we’re launching PUBG’s version 1.0 on PC, which will include our new desert map Miramar, vaulting and climbing, and all of the other features the community has been helping us refine. We’re excited to begin the second part of PUBG’s journey, and this is just the start of our commitment to the development of this game.”
He continued: “2017 has been a phenomenal year for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. With over 30m players globally across PC platforms and the Xbox Game Preview program, we owe the success we’ve experienced this year to the community, whose passion has inspired all of us here at PUBG Corp. to make the very best game we can. We’ll continue to fine tune the Battle Royale experience and will introduce additional in-game content, including new crates, to become available in early 2018.”
Fun fact: going by Wikipedia's list of the best-selling games ever, PUBG is now close to being one of the best ten selling games of all time. In fact, by the end of the year, it will likely have broken into the list.
Playerunknown's Battleground has sold as many copies as Activision Blizzard's 2013 dungeon crawler Diablo 3 and Bethesda's 2011 smash hit Skyrim and is also closing in on big hitters like Pokémon Red, Green and Blue and Wii Sports Resort.
