2017 saw the rise of battle royale games after several years of a handful of PC games dominating the genre. Once the release of PlayerUnknown’s Battleground happened and everyone saw how huge it was, a lot of developers began to put their own spin on the genre and also expand on to consoles.
One of the developers who attempted to do this is Epic Games, developer of the 2017 zombie survival game, Fortnite. A few months after release, the developer shifted focus toward the much more lucrative Fortnite: Battle Royale. The game was free for everyone on all platforms and quickly grabbed the attention of console players who didn’t have much of an alternative but had been dying to try a game like PUBG.
In the several months it has been out for, Fortnite: Battle Royale has garnered 40 million total players and just this past weekend, they had two million players playing at the exact same time.
“To put it in context,” lead systems designer Eric Williamson told Eurogamer, “some of the folk around the office are saying hey, we could be the biggest Battle Royale game in the western world, which is crazy.
“Some people are saying we could be the biggest and best-played game [full stop] in the western world.
To compare, PUBG has over 30 million players across Xbox One and PC, 3 million of which are on Xbox One alone. The $29.99 game managed to hit 3 million concurrent players on PC just last month which is seriously impressive. Although Fortnite has surpassed PUBG by being free, they’re pretty close given the circumstances. As PUBG continues to get updated on Xbox One and eventually comes to PS4, it’ll likely stay on par with its free competitor.
In related news, Fortnite: Battle Royale will be getting some new changes to its map in an upcoming update. It will not be an all-new map, rather new locations put onto the existing island that players have grown accustomed to. You can click here for more details.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is out now on Xbox One, PS4, and PC. PUBG is out now on PC and Xbox One.
