Watch the two official Chinese mobile versions of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in action
Phoning it in?
Chinese PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' publisher Tencent has released its previously announced Battlegrounds mobile games, and they both look impressively close to offering the full-fat battle royale experience seen on Xbox One and PC.
When Tencent secured the Chinese publishing rights to developer Bluehole's Battlegrounds last year, it announced that it had several PUBG projects in the works. There was the localised version of the core PC game, plus two separate mobile offerings - known as PUBG: Exhilarating Battlefield and PUBG: Army Attack.
Exhilarating Battlefield is a more-or-less straight port of the existing PC and Xbox game, developed by Lightspeed & Quantum Studio; Army Attack, meanwhile, is designed to offer a slightly more arcade-y twist on the familiar Battlegrounds survival formula, focussing on land, sea, and air battles. This second game is being developed by Timi Studios.
In spectacularly prompt fashion, both games have now started testing and are available to download on Chinese iOS/Android app stores. And unsurprisingly, given the clamour for both titles among China's almost-600 million mobile gamers, videos have already begun to surface online showing Tencent's new mobile PUBG offerings in action.
Of particular interest is the more traditional Exhilarating Battlefield version of PUBG, which features the same core mechanics of Battlegrounds on PC and Xbox One. That can be seen running on an iPhone X in the uppermost video on this page. You can watch the faster-paced, more arcade-like Army Attack in the second video. Spot the difference!
They both certainly look the part - offering a visually solid, remarkably authentic Battlegrounds experience judging by the video evidence. It'll be interesting to find out how they actually feel to play using touch controls though.
There's no word yet on whether we can expect either mobile game to make its way west as a result of Tencent's publishing partnership with Bluehole, but given PUBG's astonishing popularity, there's certainly a chance we might see them before long.