PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) May update brings Miramar to Xbox One

If you play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) on Xbox One, it's time to finally catch up with your PC brethren. The highly anticipated Miramar map will be available for the Xbox One version of the game starting tomorrow, May 24, alongside a pretty sizeable patch that brings various tuning tweaks and bug fixes.

Miramar first landed for PC last year, and it offers a completely new place for players to battle to the death. The map is set across a vast desert area, complete with settlements, rock formations, and wide, sandy plains. The map has been available on the test server for a while now, and it is quite a departure from the standard Erangel map.

Other than Miramar, the May update for PUBG packs fixes for situations where objects were rendering too slow and where players would get stuck on interior pop-ins that haven't loaded yet. There are also new guns to check out and overall optimizations to make things much smoother.

Here are the highlights from the official patch notes:

Optimization / Stabilization

Both Miramar and Erangel have significantly improved overall game performance on the Xbox One/S/X and stability has also been improved.

  • Optimization and stabilization is still the dev team's top priority. Our goal is to deliver constant improvements.
  • The free-fall and parachuting process has been optimized, leading to performance improvements during the initial stages of each game.
  • The world loading process has been optimized, allowing buildings and their interiors to load simultaneously and reducing the overall rendering time.
  • The handling of resources for unseen nearby characters' movements has been optimized to improve performance of the game.
  • Handling resources of equipping and unequipping items of unseen nearby characters have been optimized to improve performance during the early game and to reduce the likelihood of crashes
  • Character inventory loading has been optimized, improving response time when opening inventory and reducing crashing.
  • Unoccupied vehicles/boats have been optimized to increase the overall performance of the game.

Contents

New map, 'Miramar' has been added. Miramar will be available from: May 24 00:00 PDT / May 24 09:00 CEST

  • Miramar is intentionally designed to provide a vastly different Battle Royale experience.
  • It features extreme, elevated terrain and tall buildings with less trees which will give players new options for playing around cover.
  • The characteristics of 'on road' and 'off road' have been further differentiated. This will make the selection of vehicle type and decision to drive more critical/important.

New items are available on Miramar.

  • R45 is a revolver handgun which is available as world spawn
    • It uses 45 ACP Ammo and up to six bullets can be loaded Red dot sights can be equipped
    • Damage and accuracy rate is high and reload speed is faster than R1895
  • The Win 94 is a lever-action rifle
    • It uses 45 ACP Ammo and up to 8 bullets can be loaded
    • It can attach bullet loops
    • It inflicts severe damage and it is a mid-range weapon suitable for high level players.
  • The sawed-off is a small shotgun
    • It uses 12 gauge ammo and up to 2 bullets can be loaded
    • This shotgun can inflict severe damage and equips to the handgun slot in the inventory
  • A recolored version of the Ghillie suit has been added

New vehicles have been added on Miramar:

  • The mini bus is a six-seater on-road vehicle, available on Miramar only.
    • Its top speed and torque are low but it has strong durability
  • The pick-up truck is a four-seater off-road vehicle, available on Miramar only.
    • It has a great suspension system and powerful torque, making it suitable for terrain with extreme elevation differences.
  • The motorbike and buggy have new skins on Miramar

Gameplay Features

  • Emotes have been added. Emote UI will show up if you press the LB+RB buttons at the same time. Choose an emote with the right analog stick and press down with the R stick to use the selected emote.
  • Scopes have been changed to be more realistic:
    • Expanded all scopes' field of view
    • Added a parallax effect when moving weapons quickly while ADS
    • Added vignetting (darker edges), chromatic aberration (color difference caused by light refraction), and a distortion effect on the edge of scopes
  • Aim acceleration can now be turned off in settings.
  • Setting menu has been specially improved for Xbox platform.
  • Colorblind mode and other modes that could help the gameplay have been added.
  • We've removed the grenade's knockback effect for player characters when dealing non-lethal damage (if players are killed by a grenade, they'll still be knocked back)
  • Added new grenade hit effects and animations
  • 'Key legends' function has been added for gameplay controls. It can be turned off in settings.

Outgame

  • Lobby loading screen is now more clean.
  • Matchmaking can be started in the PLAY menu after selecting the game mode.
    • Map selection will be added soon
  • Matchmaking UI has been improved, allowing more pleasant entrance into the game.
  • REWARDS menu has been changed to STORE menu.
    • Go to CRATES in STORE menu to get crates.
    • Go to MY ITEMS in STORE menu to open the crates you obtained.
  • Game option settings can now be popped up.
  • Leaderboard display method has been modified, allowing users below certain ranks to see their ranks in percentage.
  • Lobby UI overall has been improved.

PUBG is currently available for $29.99 for Xbox One as part of the Game Preview program, and it includes special enhancements for Xbox One X.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl