PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Fornite are the leaders on the battle royale block, selling millions of copies and in-app transactions. Games studios and publishers are rushing to make clones. But the granddaddy of them all, H1Z1, just left its Early Access stage and has officially released.
H1Z1 used to be king of this hill. It started out as a survival game (riffing off the likes of DayZ), and with the help of a modder named … Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, it became the first standalone battle royale game. But it fell behind to PUBG, which stormed the gaming scene last spring, and then to Fortnite: Battle Royale, which offers a friendlier experience with building structures in a last-player-standing game.
H1Z1 is going to market with a new mode, focusing on vehicles. Cars and trucks have always been important to Daybreak’s game, so the designers added Auto Royale, a vehicle-only mode. The studio’s savvy enough to know that its games have a strength, something that helps it stand out in a market that’s growing bigger and bigger.
But will it be enough to compete with PUBG Corp.’s and Epic’s juggernauts?
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—Jason Wilson, GamesBeat managing editor
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From GamesBeat
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Beyond GamesBeat
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