Here's why Warzone Mobile has more players than console & PC

The launch of Warzone Mobile is here, and so far, it's been all over the place. Players haven't been particularly happy about the impressive trailers and lofty claims about visuals overselling the title, especially as the game's pop-in and fidelity have been slated on Android's app store.

Others have been horrified by its performance on a very basic level. Despite this rage, players are still flocking to the pocket edition of the battle royale game. Bigger sometimes really is better, and with 120-player lobbies, the mobile version has an advantage over its console counterpart. 

Bigger is better

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Issues have plagued the launch of Warzone Mobile, and yet, its player numbers have dominated those of PC and console. Many still occupying the original title are confused about what the game can offer if some of you can't even load a match. 

The lure of Verdansk as the OG Warzone map is too much for some, and with 120 of you able to dive into this nostalgic trip down memory lane, it's enough to see Warzone Mobile become your go-to choice. In a new conversation with IGN, Activision Senior Vice President and Co-Head of Mobile Chris Plummer has split all.

Championing the 120-player lobbies, Plummer explained, "Battle royale really took off on mobile. It is a massive, massive market on mobile now, but it's just a prototype. If you drop into battle royale games on mobile, you're basically dropping in with a hundred bots or a lot of bots, mostly bots."

"It is just not the real thing at all. And so when we got on the Call of Duty tech and that was working, and now we have access to Demonware backend and all this kind of optimization has happened over 20 years of COD secret sauce, all of a sudden we can get 120 humans in the same match."

It's a design choice

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 For those disgruntled console gamers annoyed that they can't battle another 119 players, Plummer added, "I think it's important to point out that this isn't the technical limitation in any direction. These are design choices. So the Call of Duty technology supports lots of players. We can support more players or less players in Warzone Mobile, and the same is true on other platforms."

Defending smaller lobbies in the classic Warzone, Plummer concluded, "The reason you see certain player configurations is purely through design decisions that are made based on checking out how people are playing, where the pockets of action are, where certain things happen in the journey of playing the map, and when it gets exciting or boring or whatever, and player count really impacts that."

It’s a fair point, and though Warzone Mobile isn't quite living up to expectations for many, it's clearly got the chops to go all the way. We'll always be unable to resist Verdansk, and if we get to take out even more rivals while enjoying this blast from the past, why wouldn't we?