Has Fortnite died? Not quite yet – but the battle royale bubble is about to burst
THERE is no denying that Epic Games' Fortnite has become a phenomenon. It hooked millions of players across the world on Battle Royale, made its developer hundreds of millions of dollars and made the firm's founder a billionaire.
But as it slips down the Twitch charts, signs point to the playground fad going the way of loom bands, snap bracelets and pog.
Experts at Argos analysed their sales data and recently predicted that Fortnitemania would peak by Christmas, while even the biggest streamers such as Ninja are suffering from an endless flow of negativity about the game 'dying' or losing pace.
This July, profits for Fortnite were still up on the month before -- but only by a minuscule 2 per cent, despite the game's recent launch on iPhone. The month before that it had climbed 10 per cent, and roughly 30 per cent the month before that.
Not only that, there's competition on the horizon.
Call of Duty's Black Ops IV's Blackout mode has seized a chunk of players, pushing Fortnite into third place on Twitch, with the beta getting rave reviews as popular players and streamers dived in and labelled it a Fortnite-killer.
While the 18-rated Black Ops IV may not cut out huge chunks of Fortnite's pocket-money-spending playground-dwelling core audience, it may well take capture the Drakes, Dele Allis and Demetrious Johnsons of this world who have done so much to raise Fortnite's profile and make it cool.
It won't take very many celebrity fans jumping ship to turn Fortnite from the cool new thing to the game that you only play if your mum won't let you play Call of Duty - and that is surely the kiss of death.
It also isn't having a huge amount of success with new things. Epic's foray into formal esports via the summer and fall skirmish events haven't replicated the success of individual popular streamers messing around, and have been beset by problems. They've been lambasted over the state of the technology behind the game with the tournaments being branded a "slot machine" due to technical issues.
Unlike Minecraft -- which, at 100 million players a month and still rising is STILL being played by more people -- Fortnite also requires a constant stream of updates to keep players engaged.
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It's got an item store that's updated multiple times a week, a new "season" of content every ten weeks or so -- and even then, it is already starting to get repetitive.
How different is dancing on a dancefloor, or in front of a camera, or under a streetlight? As for skins, there are only so many different colours of bear people will be willing to play as.
For now the juggernaut rolls on -- but the end is very much in sight.
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