PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, arguably the hottest game released in 2017, recently came out of Steam Early Access on PC with the developers laying out the roadmap for future development. A little earlier this month the Battle Royale game had launched on the Xbox One Game Preview program, where the game reached over one million players in the first 48 hours despite attracting criticism for its currently poor performance. At the same time, Microsoft announced that it would bundle PUBG alongside the new Xbox One X console for a limited time.
As you can see below, the official Xbox Twitter account debuted a new image ad yesterday to celebrate this deal.
Get lost in this year's Best Multiplayer experience. #PUBG [T] is now on #XboxOne: https://t.co/42H3kdCxP6 #TheGameAwards pic.twitter.com/ABEuOp2hzE
— Xbox (@Xbox) December 26, 2017
Unfortunately, it seems like Microsoft's advertising agency might have stolen the ad concept from Redditor Macsterr, who posted the following image about a month ago.
When a fellow Redditor suggested that they could have simply had the same idea for an ad concept, Macsterr replied that this was impossible as his original post had registered over 63K views, hinting that there was a strong chance someone at the advertising agency used by Microsoft could have seen it.
Admittedly the images look very similar, with the exception of swapping the original Xbox One S console with the Xbox One X as befitting the new deal. The clouds in the background, as well as the particular choice of grass, all seem to give it away. Let us know what you make of this puzzling situation below. We'll keep you posted if and when Microsoft clears it up.
As a reminder, Bluehole revealed last week that over 30 million players are now playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds across both platforms. With the PC version estimated to have around 26 million players, this could suggest that there are already roughly four million players playing PUBG on the Xbox One.