H1Z1 was the first popular Battle Royale game as we know them today, so it's no surprise that its open beta on PS4 has garnered a great deal of interest from fans of the genre. So much interest, in fact, that the H1Z1: Battle Royale servers simply can't keep up with the amount of players attempting to log in.

Originally releasing on PC, H1Z1 combines fast-paced shooter elements with vehicles in last-man-standing combat. The open beta for the PS4 went live a couple of days ago after a short closed beta concluded, and since no end date has been announced for it, it seems the game will be free-to-play for some time - perhaps even following Fortnite's lead as a permanently free-to-play title.

Perhaps because it is free, combined with the fact that there are no other realistic military-style shooters on PS4, the H1Z1 open beta has been drawing in an impressive number of players. On the first day alone, the beta peaked at 200,000 concurrent players - which beats the all-time concurrent player record on the PC version by a comfortable margin of 50,000.

This much attention has proven to be as much a curse as a blessing, however, as server troubles continue to plague the PS4 open beta. Many players are simply unable to even log into the game due to high traffic, whilst complaints about frozen character models and being separated from party members flood in from those that do manage to join a game.

Despite these issues - which were present from the game's debut and have continued into its second and third days - the game still continues to be popular, with Daybreak Games announcing on twitter than the beta has seen over 1,500,000 unique players since launch. The popularity will no doubt be a welcome change to Daybreak, after H1Z1's PC player base was down by 91% a few months ago, and currently experiences concurrent player counts which are a fraction of those seen on the PS4 version.

With H1z1: Battle Royale showing such promising levels of interest at this early stage of release, it's crucial that Daybreak manage to overcome these server issues in a timely manner to avoid negative first impressions from droves of new players. It goes without saying that Fortnite is H1Z1's most prominent competitor, and with Epic Games' current success to contend with, H1Z1 has its work cut out if it wants its own slice of the console Battle Royale market.

The H1Z1: Battle Royale open beta is free to play now on PS4.

Source: Eurogamer