The era of Fortnite is far from over, as Epic has hit enough new milestones to start talking publicly about them again.
Fortnite now has 200 million registered players, a 60% increase from June alone, when it last clocked in at 125 million.
It also now has 8.3 million concurrent players on a regular basis, another huge jump from the last time we got these stats, 4.3 million in February.
I mean, what else can even be said about Fortnite at this point? It’s a global gaming trend that I’ve rarely seen on this scale, not since Pokémon GO took over the world, but Fortnite has done that and sustained it for much longer.
Fortnite has grown big enough to do cross-branding deals from everyone from the NFL to Marvel. It has dumped $100 million into an esports prize pool that dwarfs all rivals. It has made global superstars out of streamers like Ninja, Myth and Dr.Lupo.
There are some signs that the good times may be waning. Twitch viewership for Fortnite has been trending downward, and revenue has been somewhat flat after months of explosive growth. But even if Fortnite may have peaked in some ways, it’s still growing and others, and still the most popular game on the planet currently by quite a wide margin. This is still a game where I can write a guide about where to dance near wall-mounted fish and it will get nearly a million views in a week. And this has been sustained since spring 2018 at this point, it’s truly astonishing.
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All good things must fade, but Fortnite has done a great job of staying relevant both culturally and to players for far longer than I would have anticipated. Fortnite surpasses its predecessor, PUBG, and so far has deflected pretty much all major comers to the battle royale genre since. Even Call of Duty’s Blackout, a solid stab at the genre, seems to have faded into the background while Fortnite is still in the headlines constantly.
Fortnite season 7 is on the horizon. Literally, there is a giant snowstorm on the horizon that should be arriving soon to cover the map. The game continues to change in interesting ways and Epic keeps things fresh with new items and content, responding to problems almost instantly in their eternal quest to keep balance. It’s been a hell of a 2018 for Fortnite, and from the looks of it, 2019 might not be so bad either.
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