During the Game Awards 2017 show, PUBG Corporation CEO Chang-han Kim revealed the company will launch PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds version 1.0 on December 20, 2017, bringing the game out of Steam’s Early Access program. During the show, Kim said the game has already sold over 24 million copies at $30 a pop, and continues to grow. That number will only go up once the game comes to consoles via the Xbox One Preview program December 12.
Kim also announced that the game’s long-awaited second map, the desert level “Miramar,” will be made available to play on the game’s test servers after midnight pacific time (12/8 at 00:01am PST). The map will be available on PC after PUBG enters version 1.0, but won’t be made available to Xbox One owners until early 2018.
Out of all the awards served up Thursday night, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was only nominated for three. For “Game of the Year,” The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took the golden medal, while Overwatch landed the “Best Ongoing Game” prize. But at the end of the show, no award was handed out for “Best Multiplayer,” which also included Fortnite, Call of Duty: World War II, Splatoon 2, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and Destiny 2.
Along with appearing at the 2017 Game Awards show with the official PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds 1.0 launch date, Chang-han Kim brought along a trailer showcasing all the action that will take place on the new Miramar map. Halfway into the clip you’ll see the dusty desert landscape, what appears to be a factory, and a local town that likely plays host to all the factory workers.
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is a highly-popular first-person shooter with a last-man-standing game mechanic. The game is based on mods by Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene that were built for H1Z1: King of the Kill and the ARMA games. These mods were inspired by the 2000 Japanese dystopian film Battle Royale, a theme that carries over into the current game. Greene serves as creative director for Battlegrounds.
As different as it seems, your objective on Miramar is the same as on the game’s current map, “Erangel”: One hundred players parachute into the map, scavenge for weapons and equipment, and kill up to 99 other players. A “safe zone” is provided at the start, but decreases over time as players are taken down one by one. Each map is roughly five miles by five miles in size, and provides everything a desperate gamer needs to tear down the enemy: weapons, armor, vehicles, and so much more. But according to PUBG Corporation, version 1.0 will also include modding tools for customizing the game.
“We’ll deliver a complete Battle Royale experience based on the feedback that we receive during Early Access with a focus on optimizing gunplay, weapons and attachments, animations, vehicles, the loot-system and much more,” the company states.
Check out our beginner’s guide here if you haven’t already parachuted into the action.
