At the beginning of 2021, Krafton announced that it was working on a mobile version of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds called PUBG: New State. After much testing over the last year, we learned last month that the battle royale was finally ready for prime time, with the official release set for November 11th. Well, that day is today, and so PUBG: New State is now available on the Google Play Store as a free-to-play download. So far, player reviews are middling, with plenty of complaints sprinkled throughout the current 3.7 rating, covering issues like random server disconnects and lag, though to be fair, it is release day, as these kinds of problems tend to be expected.

The Cinematic launch trailer above does little to illustrate how PUBG: New State plays since it's a cinematic, so if you're looking for an in-depth video, I recorded an hour's worth of gameplay during a testing phase this past June, which you can watch below..

More or less, PUBG: New State will exist alongside PUBG: Mobile, so it's not quite a sequel, but it's also not an offshoot since it plays very similarly. It's still a battle royale game. It simply offers updated graphics with a few gameplay tweaks and a couple of changes in setting, seeing that there's a futuristic theme. The game indeed utilizes the Vulkan API, which is where the graphical improvements come from.

Sadly awesome graphics doesn't make for a successful shooter for the masses, and so the Play Store is stuffed with complaints that the game is too demanding and runs poorly. Crashing and poor connections to the servers also appear to be an issue right now, though I would expect performance to be ironed out in the coming days as player demand dies down. Krafton has also listed a few issues in its release notes, where screen flickering is a problem, along with USB debugging locking people out of the game (it's recommended that players turn this off). Of course, I've tested PUBG: New State thoroughly on my ROG 5, and I can play at the maximum graphical settings at a steady 60FPS, but those with weaker devices may run into issues, especially those with low-end phones. PUBG: New State looks great, but you will need the power to run it.

Minimum Requirements

• CPU: 64-bit (ABI arm64 or higher)
• RAM: 2GB or higher
• OS: Android 6.0 or higher
• Open GL 3.1 or higher / Vulkan 1.1 or higher

So yeah, today's launch for PUBG: New State hasn't been the smoothest so far, but it would appear Krafton is on top of the game's issues, which is always good to see. Now, whether or not PUBG: New State will appeal to hardcore PUBG: Mobile players remains to be seen. Of course, if you'd like to take the game for a spin to make up your own mind, you can grab the free install from the Play Store widget below.