Yesterday, PUBG Mobile surpassed a massive figure of 100 million downloads on iOS and Android platforms, yes, that’s 100 with six zeros on its side which is indeed a gigantic number to achieve. PUBG Mobile from Tencent Games was released on March 19 marking its fifth month of being in business and available for tablets and smartphones. It’s major competitor, the uber-successful Fortnite recently surpassed the 100 million downloads on iOS platform alone in late July according to the analysis service Apptopia.
For those who don’t know (or say for those who are living under a rock), PUBG Mobile is a scaled-down version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds from PUBG Corporation. It is a military-style shooter game that has a number of rivals such as Fortnite. While playing PUBG Mobile, the players are deployed on an island and in fact, there are one hundred players that are deployed on an island in a quest to fight and defeat others to win the title of the winner by outlasting everyone on the island. The game was earlier available on Xbox One and PC but in March as in the day when PUBG Corporation decided to leap to iOS and Android, the game become a craze in people across the globe excluding Japan, Korea, and China.
According to Vincent Wang, PUBG Mobile general manager, he thanked the development team at Quantum Studios and Lightspeed to offer such an immense support to the game while he thanked the players around the world who showed their dedication towards the mobile version of the game. He added that the PUBG Mobile is updated with new content very often which helps it attract more users while minting more profit out of it.
When it debuted on iOS and Android, the game didn’t have any in-game purchases compared to other games, however, it has since included a number of in-game purchases and upgrades that allowed it to mint around $50 million in revenue. The updated content allowed Tencent to increase purchases where it reported a hike of 365 percent after a premium progression pass was rolled out to the users. Further, the game has also included a number of events such as a crossover event with Tom Cruise’ Mission: Impossible – Fallout and more.
On the other hand, Fortnite is an uber-popular game available for iOS and has recently been made available on Samsung smartphones as beta. It is yet to be available for Android smartphones but there’s a catch. Epic Games, the developer of Fortnite has stated that the game won’t be available on Google Play Store and it will be available on its official website only. This could give PUBG Mobile an edge over Fortnite due to its strong presence on Google Play Store.
