Last year the king of the Battle Royale crop was PUBG Corporation's PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. The game had made waves by moving more than 34 million copies and becoming a huge success for Bluehole Studios. Microsoft decided to get in on the action by snagging exclusivity rights for the game on its home console, bringing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds to the Xbox One at the end of 2017. However, it's possible that the console exclusivity could be coming to an end soon for the Xbox One, given that new evidence has emerged indicating that PUBG may be coming to the PlayStation 4.
According to Game Informer, the South Korean Ratings Board has an updated listing for PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. If you attempt to check the site listing at this point you'll note that the South Korean Ratings Board have removed the game listing.
Some gamers managed to capture the site image before the listing was pulled, and indeed it does show that there's an application for a rating from a PUBGE Co. Ltd., It's listed as a first-person shooter and states that it's specifically for the PlayStation 4.
The rating includes the standard hallmarks of the Battle Royale genre, including excessive violence and excessive violence through realistic weapon depictions. The game's rating was depicted as "Not For Youth" according to the South Korean Ratings Board before the page was pulled offline.
According to the image of the page before it went down, the rating was granted on September 19th, 2018, so the rating happened rather recently.
Some are obviously wondering about what this means for the Xbox One. Keep in mind that Microsoft has frequently paid for timed console exclusivity for games on the Xbox platform. Or in some cases like the original Mass Effect, paid to have the game made for the Xbox 360 just until Electronic Arts swooped in to nab the publishing license for the series thereafter.
Others might be wondering why Sony or PUBG Corporation would bother with porting the game to the PlayStation 4, but it's all about market expansion.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds hit a peak at the end of 2017 as Epic Games' free-to-play alternative, Fortnite, began picking up steam. Epic's Unreal Engine 4-powered Battle Royale game went on to become one of the most played games on the market. This also started a rather heated legal rivalry between the two after PUBG Corporation sued Epic Games for copyright infringement.
Even though some may believe that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds hit its peak, there's still some potential growth left if it does release on the PS4. The developers definitely had interest in getting the game out on as many platforms as possible, and if the classification board in South Korea is anything to go by, it just might be happening sooner rather than later. Of course, there's no guarantee that the game is coming to the PS4, it's just that evidence has surfaced for that possibility.
Ultimately, though, PUBG Corporation will need to get the game's performance under control. While Xbox gamers don't have to deal with the rampant hackers, they do have to deal with the massive frame-rate drops and screen-tearing. If the game really is coming to Sony's platform, we'll see if the PS4 version will manage optimization better than its console brethren.
