PUBG abandons Xbox exclusivity for multiplatform release, but it still isn't up to snuff on PS4

PUBG’s timed exclusivity on Microsoft’s Xbox One family of consoles is at an end. Now that the battle royale shooter is on PS4, has it improved at all?

On launch, PUBG on Xbox One was in an absolute state. Those on the base console would suffer from entire environments refusing to load in properly for minutes on end. Those on both consoles would see huge framerate drops and stuttering.

Now that it’s on PS4, has PUBG improved much? Well, thankfully, the PS4 version isn’t anything like the game on launch Xbox systems. It is, however, very close to the current version available on Xbox.

Much like the Xbox One/Xbox One S, the standard PS4 is locked at 1080p with the same horrible anti-aliasing. (via Digital Foundry) Framerate can still be an issue. The initial dive-in on any map leads to incredibly low performance, but once players are on the ground it becomes playable. There are still stutters, drops in performance and technical issues galore.

PS4 Pro owners get a slightly better experience. Performance is slightly improved over base Xbox One and PS4, but the visuals do fall short of Xbox One X. While the textures are considerably worse on the base systems, resolution lays at 1440p on Pro compared to One X’s native 4K.

With the Battle Royale genre becoming fairly saturated this past year, should PUBG be getting away with subpar performance and poor visuals? It’s biggest rivals, Fortnite and Black Ops 4, all manage to handle much better performance as well as providing more polished experiences. PUBG mobile, handled by Chinese company Tencent, has even managed to be more polished and up-to-date recently.

The PC side is getting rather crowded, too. Competitors such as Rings of Elysium are already bringing players to their side after PUBG is failing to be updated enough to keep everyone satisfied.

It leads to the question, how long does PUBG have left?