Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG, are the two biggest battle royales to date. As of March 2019, the most recent data, Fortnite has a registered player count of 250 million users, blowing PUBG on PC's player count of 500,000 users out of the water.
But player counts don't mean everything, and if we're still talking numbers, than PUBG mobile's player count of 400 million truly takes the cake. Statistics finally aside, it's time to tackle the meat and potatoes of these two games and decide which one is a truly battle royale king.
10 Fortnite: Stating The Obvious, It's Free
Sure this is far from that "meat and potatoes" we were talking about when discussing these two titans, but Fortnite's price point, or lack of should we say, has always been a big caveat. To this day PUBG still retails for $29.99 dollars, and that remained its price point long before it was a finished game, when it was a buggy mess back in Beta. Fortnite on the other hand has been a complete package since day 1, and has always been free with a fair micro transaction system that has been adapted all over the gaming world.
9 PUBG: More And Better Designed Maps
Even if we compare the OG maps from these two games it's a bit of a toss up as to which is the winner. Sure Fortnite has Tilted Towers, but PUBG has School; and in case you don't play the latter, School is a place where half of the lobby's players drop resulting in a massacre that leaves only one or two survivors who are barely clinging to life. But that's just the OG maps, PUBG now has four unique maps, all of which are just as good as the original in their own rights. Fortnite is finally making an alteration to it's original map, so there's not much competition here.
8 Fortnite: A Lot More Personality
PUBG has brought a whole new meaning to the word sterile. Even today the game looks like an earlier edition of Call of Duty that was stripped down to it's barest of bones. The only personality it has that comes to mind is the iconic level three helmet and the frying pan, but there's not much more than that.
Fortnite on the other hand reeks of personality, so much so that they were even able to thread a story through all of it's themes. Despite not having reality breaking graphics, it's still just such a fun game to look at and play, and that's a testament to the style.
7 PUBG: Vehicle Hi-Jinx
The vehicles in PUBG are as essential to the game as players running through the fields swinging frying pans and getting sniped by Shroud. Let's see what we have here -- Minivans full of squads slamming into buildings and going up in flames, motorcyclists flipping through the skies only to get their best friend killed as they run into a tree -- ah, the list goes on. It's all so much good fun, and while Fortnite does have some great vehicles as of today, they're mostly meant for playing around with. They just aren't the craziness that can be found with the vehicles in PUBG.
6 Fortnite: Cosmetic Items That Don't Look Like Trash
The cosmetics in PUBG are some of the hottest garbage this side of the Mississippi. "Oh wow, I unlocked brown boots instead of black ones!" or "No way! Blue pants instead of grey ones!" The best items you can receive or goggles, or a yellow tracksuit, that's really it though. Fortnite has Thanos, unicorns, scarecrows, ninjas, football players -- truthfully some it's kind of cringey -- but a lot of it, is still much better than PUBG's items. We don't even know how PUBG has the gall to charge the prices they do for their whack item sets, they're the big losers for this one.
5 PUBG: First Person
Third-person is the standard version of both games, but PUBG takes the gold here with their first-person mode, that quite honestly might be the best way to play. You see, with first-person there just isn't any cheese, you can't see corners that you wouldn't normally see or have blind corner battles.
It's just you, a straightforward perspective and absolutely no cheese at all. It makes sound much more important too, as now with your reduced perspective you have to rely on all of your senses. Another caveat is you pay a lot more attention to the detail and the graphics of the game.
4 Fortnite: Faster Paced Gameplay And Minecraft
While we take great joy in comparing these two battle royale titans, Fortnite really should be in a different league of it's own. PUBG is a traditional battle royale game, but Fortnite is not only battle royale, but Minecraft too. In the game you have to gather supplies and build to survive -- it's honestly quite bizarre when you really exam it. In the middle of a heated battle you could be mining for stone and build a four-story house. And don't think you'll get very far without utilizing these mechanics, as some of the best players have gotten that way by becoming master builders.
3 PUBG: More Grounded Gameplay
We didn't even get this as much as we wanted in the last entry, but Fortnite is fast. Good luck trying to get your dad into the game because if you're not on your P's and Q's you're going to get pwned by some 8-year-old wearing a snap-back sideways within minutes of dropping off the battle bus. PUBG however, is more in line with the game play of a classic shooter. It's slow, almost empty at times and getting kills in it usually requires a much more patient, methodical approach. Sure the best players can run-n-gun like it's nobodies business, but if you play the game slow you have a good chance of making it far.
2 Fortnite: A Microtransaction System That Feels Fair
This is the part where many gamers rightfully bash PUBG into the the grave that it deserves to die in after introducing it's shady business practices. First, charge for a game that's an unfinished buggy mess that continued to be an unfinished buggy mess for years to come. Second, bring in a shady micro-transaction lottery system that rewards you with crappy cosmetic items for a bloated price. Third, copy the fair and successful battle pass formula that Fortnite has implemented since the start of the series. Boy are those PUBG devs shady, and while the Epic Game's higher ups are no less shady, they at least implemented fair business practices in their most profitable game.
1 PUBG: But It Did Come First
PUBG is not the first battle royale in the existence of this overblown, saturated genre. But it was without a doubt one of the first to popularize it and shape it into what it is today. Many of the devs for PUBG even worked on the H1Z1 Survival Mode, the game mode that quite literally made the blueprint for modern battle royale. So in many rights it's hard not to see that Fortnite rode the coattails of PUBG, adding a handful of different elements to perfect the game. Still, I've put way more hours into PUBG, but when it comes to the better overall game... you'll just have to decide that for yourself.