Battle Royale has been one of the biggest talking points in gaming for the past couple of years. Most of the genre's rise in popularity can be attributed to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a title original designed as a mod from Brendan Greene, PlayerUnknown himself. Even with battle royale's influence across the industry, with teams ranging from smaller indie developers to the AAA ecosystem of high-profile franchises taking a chance with the last man standing multiplayer approach, Greene's ambitions appear to now be pulling him away from the competitive online experience he's helped to build.

Speaking at GDC last month, Brendan Greene revealed he's now working on another game other than PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The game in discussion, given its infancy of pre-production, doesn't have any details Greene felt were worth discussing yet. He did point out, however, that the game will certainly not be a sequel to PUBG, the battle royale game that became more popular than he ever thought would, earning over $11 million in its opening weekend.

With PUBG now out of early access across PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, Greene says he feels comfortable with the team at PUBG Corp's ability to maintain and improve on the technical issues which've become more noticeable in PUBG over time, especially after the release of Fortnite,Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's own battle royale mode, Blackout, and Respawn Entertainment's Apex Legends, which launched this past February. It makes sense for PUBG Corp and Brendan Greene to not try and rush out a sequel title also, something Xaviant Games fell victim to when it tried to stealth launch The Culling 2 last summer and backfired greatly.

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Even with a more competitive market where battle royale games are releasing more frequently, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ended last year on a high note PUBG Corp and Bluehole should be proud of. After seeing a steady decline in concurrent users throughout the course of 2018, December saw the game's first increase in users in almost a year on Steam.

Not long after, Microsoft's timed-exclusive window with PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds ended, and the full game was able to release on PlayStation 4. With Sony's PS4 userbase slowly approach the 100 million sales milestone for consoles, more potential players further add reason to why PUBG Corp doesn't need to invest in a sequel, and why Brendan Greene can now move on to other passion projects.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is available for Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Gamesindustry.biz