While mobile esports haven’t yet fully taken off in the west, they’ve ballooned in popularity in regions like China, India and Southeast Asia over the past few years.During an interview with Ginx Esports, the PUBG Mobile Esports director James Yang clarified their plans to compete with the leading esports titles like League of Legends and CS:GO and even aim to become not only the best mobile esports title, but the number one esports title in the world.
Yang added: “We want to be there. We want to compete with them. We want to go shoulder-to-shoulder with them, or even bigger – and I don’t think that’s impossible.
Following in the footsteps of Clash Royale and Arena of Valor, PUBG Mobile is on the rise as one of the next huge mobile esport contenders – with their PUBG Mobile World League Season Zero, which concluded last month, breaking records to achieve a peak concurrent audience of 1.1 million with over 40 million total hours watched.
Talking about the mobile esports developments in western countries, James Yang said, “We want to make this ecosystem pyramid in other countries with our learning from eastern countries. That’s something we want to do but we also know it takes time”
Specifying the team’s long term goals about building the mobile esports ecosystem in western countries, he adds “Europe, North America… they still, I think, need time to get used to mobile esports or even PUBG Mobile. So we’ll continue to push, we’ll continue to invest to make our own ecosystem in their countries. That’s absolutely an important mission for long term.This year our teams has had some discussions of our long-term goals. We make plans for three, five years and we decided to become a tier 1 esport. Not just the number one mobile esport, but already we want to escape from the limitations as a mobile esport.That is quite challenging but that’s what we’re trying to be. We’re aiming to be not only number mobile esport, but we want to be even maybe number one esports game in the world.”
PUBG Mobile’s 1.0 update will launch 8 September, while the Global Championship Season Zero begins in late November 2020.