PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is among the most popular games of 2017 even though it hasn’t “officially” released, but as of December, the game is only available on PC and Xbox One. That will soon change, however, as Chinese company Tencent will be releasing a mobile version of the game. The new mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds will be a joint production between Tencent and the original game’s development team, and it will, at least initially, only be available in China. The goal is for the mobile experience to be as close to its PC and console counterparts as possible. In the announcement, Tencent said that the game’s shooting controls and “social networking” — likely referring to in-game messaging — would be optimized for mobile devices. Tencent is no stranger to the mobile gaming space, and it’s possible that the mobile PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds could eventually make its way outside of China. The company’s Honor of Kings, which has a player count of over 200 million people, will be releasing for the Nintendo Switch in other regions as Arena of Battle. Though it would likely be too taxing on the Switch’s hardware to run the full version of Battlegrounds, it’s possible the mobile version could come to the platform. With the Switch still selling like hotcakes, it’s a user base itching to get its hands on another big-name multiplayer title after the success of games like Splatoon 2 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has already sold more than 13 million copies in its early access state, and it managed to break a concurrent Steam user record with nearly 3 million people online playing at the same time — that’s more than twice the record set by Dota 2 in 2016, and more than eight times the number of concurrent Grand Theft Auto V players. It has only continued to gain, well, “steam” since then, and with its launch on the Xbox One, sales should be substantially higher. The console version of the game will offer a similar experience to its PC sibling, and Xbox One X players will be able to take advantage of HDR support. The game will launch as part of the Xbox Preview program on December 12.
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Activision’s popular battle royale game Call of Duty: Warzone is making the jump to mobile in March. Specifically, it launches for iOS and Android devices on March 21. This is a separate game from Tencent’s Call of Duty: Mobile, which is currently available on the App Store and Google Play Store. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile is made in-house by several Activision teams, including Beenox, Digital Legends, Solid State Studios, and Shanghai Studios. Further signifying that connection is that Warzone Mobile has shared progression with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and the PC and console versions of Warzone. Payers can level up the same weapons, access content from the BlackCell Battle Pass and store, and gain XP on the same account across all three games. Warzone Mobile will also have full controller support, although it will have a virtual controller overlay that’s highly customizable.
For most of 2023, we’ve seen median 5G speeds among the big three carriers remain fairly stable, leading us to believe that things were beginning to reach a plateau. However, it now seems that this may only be true at the very top end of the 5G speed race. Today, Ookla released its latest market research on 5G speeds for the third quarter of 2023, and it’s an interesting mix of surprising and not-so-surprising developments in the 5G market.
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