PUBG Mobile Crosses 1 Billion Downloads, New "Storm" Update Teased

PUBG's mobile version has crossed a major milestone, as the developer has confirmed the game has reached 1 billion downloads worldwide. The studio celebrated the news with a video, which also teases that a new update is coming to the game soon.

The teaser text says, "PUBG Mobile's new update is guaranteed to create a storm." The "storm" part of this is likely a reference to the nature or content of the update, but that's all we have to go on for now. Check out the video below.

Gaming industry analyst Daniel Ahmad observed on Twitter that PUBG Mobile reaching 1 billion installs demonstrates that core games on PC can successfully transition to mobile. "This is a milestone for PC-to-mobile game adaptations," Ahmad said.

Franchises that tend to succeed and grow to this kind of scale are often in the casual space, which makes PUBG Mobile's success all the more significant.

"The accessibility of PUBG Mobile, due to being available on smartphones as a free-to-play title, has allowed the game to reach 12x more players than the original paid PC/Console version of the game," Ahmad said. "Most mobile games that reach 1 billion downloads are in the casual segment, not core."

PUBG Mobile's universe will expand with the launch of the PUBG New State for mobile, which is a futuristic version of PUBG. PUBG Mobile also has the ongoing benefit of less competition than normal because Fortnite remains unavailable on iOS due to Epic's ongoing lawsuits.

Given the huge success of PUBG Mobile, it's not hard to see and understand why publishers like EA and Activision are pushing so hard in the mobile space. EA recently paid more than $2 billion to acquire the developer of Kim Kardashian's mobile game because mobile is bigger than console and PC. Activision, for its part, has said it may develop mobile games for every one of its franchises. Its latest release is Crash: On the Run, which releases on March 25.