‘PUBG’ Xbox One Updates Give More Squad Options, Reduce Lag

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for the Xbox One received two updates Thursday and Friday during what is usually a dead week in game development. The hugely popular battle royale title has received a pair of updates to improve squads, lag issues, and crashes.

The first PUBG update was received Thursday afternoon and addressed in-game lag issues for both the Xbox One and PC via a server-side patch. Rubber-banding, the experience of warping back to a previous spot, while playing was a noticeable issue on both platforms at the start of a match and appears to have been addressed successfully.

The server-side patch also addresses a crash issue for PUBG on the Xbox One. Crashes have been a problem, particularly for those with the original Xbox One model, since the game first launched into the Xbox Game Preview program.

Feedback from the PUBG community so far indicates crashes are still an issue even after the Thursday update. They are less frequent, but the game is certainly not what anybody would describe as stable at this point.

Friday’s patch provides players more options squad options when playing Squad mode. It is not always possible to put together a 4-man squad and matchmaking to fill a squad can often lead to other problems from a non-communicative teammate to team killing. Players can now choose to play Squad mode with three, two, or even only one player in the squad.

PUBG has been hugely successful on the Xbox One thus far in terms of sales. It quickly sold over one million copies and is likely approaching another million sold just a couple of week later.

However, PUBG has not been as successful when it comes to performance and stability. The game continues to run at sub-30 fps framerates, even on the Xbox One X, and has the previously mentioned stability issues.

While dealing with performance and crashing issues is what the Xbox Game Preview program is meant for, there are some in the PUBG community who are understandably not happy about the game crashing. Bluehole has shown a strong dedication to releasing patches regularly, however, as this is now the fourth update in the three weeks since launch. It will be interesting to see how PUBG continues to mature on the console in the coming weeks and months.