What PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Looks Like At Other Publishers

Let's imagine that everyone is getting in on the action.

Article by Mike Williams Reviews Editor, USgamer

Updated on Aug. 1, 2017

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

Yesterday, I said that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will be the beginning of the next genre that many publishers and developers will try to capitalize on. The Battle Royale genre isn't entirely new, but Battlegrounds has shown there's significant money to be made there. Ubisoft has already said that it's interested in adding a similar gameplay type as downloadable content in the future. So who's next?

Let's imagine a world where every major publisher is already on the Battle Royale train. What do their respective games look like?

Electronic Arts: Mass Effect: APEX Elite Survival

Mass Effect: Andromeda may not have hit the mark and the entire studio was just folded into EA Motive, but in Electronic Arts' world, there's still room to make money on Mass Effect! Introducing Mass Effect: APEX Elite Survival. In the Mass Effect universe, players become a group of trainees looking to be a part of the elite APEX squad. You and 99 other trainees are sent down to a harsh alien world and given a limited time to scavenge armor and weapons to survive.

Why play on boring Earth-bound maps when you can play in space? Space is cooler! And in Mass Effect: APEX Elite Survival you can also find and unlock Soldier, Engineer, and Adept abilities on the map. Imagine being able to throw around players and vehicles with your biotic skills.

Unfortunately, you begin the game as the bog standard human. Everything else - more races, cooler armor, awesome weapon and skill skins - is only unlockable through APEX Packs, which you can buy via multiplayer credits or real money. Of course, you'll only get the best stuff through advanced APEX Packs, which cost Andromeda points, which cost real money. Also, it's only on Origin.

Activision: Call of Duty: Black Ops Strike Force

Folks didn't like Infinite Warfare for some reason, so it's back to the real world. Battlefield 1 has World War 1 covered, you don't want to step on Call of Duty: WW2's toes, and doing Modern Warfare means that players will just call you a Battlegrounds copycat. So let's go with Black Ops instead.

Battle Royale, 100 players, parachute in, last man standing; you know the drill. Everything is the same as Battlegrounds. But now the maps are in places like 1960's Cuba, South Vietnam, and Kowloon City in Hong Kong. You have that Black Ops flavor to get the players hooked. Maybe you even recall parts of classic Black Ops maps like Nuketown and Firing Range within the large Battle Royal maps. Activision could release it standalone, but we all know it'll be included with Call of Duty 2018.

Sega: Sonic Survives

Building on the magic of Sonic Forces, where you can create your own character and fighting alongside Sonic the Hedgehog, we have Sonic Survive. Create your own Sonic character from a list of available creatures, with additional hairstyles and clothing accessories for your furry heroes are available via Sonic points.

Player are thrown into a colorful map full of fiendish traps left by Dr. Eggman. Collect rings and other power-ups to increase your survival, while dodging the traps and other players. Take a hit while you have no rings and you're out of the match. Like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, this will oddly good, better than most modern Sonic titles. Sega will never make a sequel.

Sega Atlus: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Royale

Atlus already has a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off with "Survivor" in the title, so let's go with a different name: Devil Royale. Atlus would probably still pull from Devil Survivor canon to make this work, which is surprising because it gives us something that's vaguely close to the original Battle Royale.

In maps reflecting pre- and post-apocalyptic Tokyo, Japanese high school students compete to see who gets live. Every last avatar is fated to die and only through the Battle Royale can they live again, thanks to a pact made via a smartphone app. Every player is teleported into Tokyo, left to fight and subdue demons to gain new abilities. The strategy lies in not only determining if you're strong enough to subdue a demon, but also if another player is going to kill you while you're doing it.

It's not quite the same as Battlegrounds, but it has that SMT spin and sweet character art from Suzuhito Yasuda. I'd buy it.

Ubisoft: Kill All Rabbids

The easy answer is additional downloadable content for Ghost Recon: Wildlands or a multiplayer mode for Assassin's Creed. But we dream bigger here at USgamer. Instead, the Rabbids get the spotlight here. The Rabbids fight it out for supremacy!

Costumes on each map give players different powers, like a cowboy costume allowing you to shoot a popgun, while a knight can tank a few hits before falling down face first. Rabbids don't kill though - or do they? I have no clue - so instead, you knock out other players and steal their costumes. As with the Rabbids history, the maps and costumes will be based on current pop culture and other Ubisoft properties.

It'll be very popular with kids and somehow make a ton of money. We weep silently.

Capcom: Mega Man Battle Network Cross

Resident Evil? That would make sense! Never! You wanted Mega Man back in a brand-new game and Capcom is ever the deliverer of the Monkey's Paw wish, so here's your game. The Mega Man Battle Network and Star Force universe makes a good spot for Capcom to plant its flag.

Players take control of their own NetNavi character, fighting on different network maps. They enter a match equipped with different decks of Battle Chips, which can be drawn from random points on each map. Think of Phantom Dust, but with bigger maps, more players, and permadeath. Winning nets you currency, which can be used buy new deck or costume packs.

Despite it not being the Mega Man you want, it'll be super fun and Capcom will run it into the ground with 4-5 sequels before cancelling further versions because they don't sell more than 3 million copies.