VOICES
FORTNITE: The Comeback
March 15, 2019 | ISSUE 10
By Ramon Cedeno
The game Industry that produces Battle Royale games gained a lot of support and popularity at the beginning of 2017 first with H1z1 Battle Royale. More players joined in March 2017 when PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) came out with a total of 360,000 copies that sold in just 3 days. Each copy costs about 30 dollars, and they gained a profit of about $11 million.
In July 25, 2017 Epic Games took PUBG by surprise because in just 14 days their new game called Fortnite gained about 11 millions members. When Fortnite came out they were getting a lot of popularity and also it was free.
In Fortnite, players have the option to spend money on buying skins or emotes with the virtual money called “V bucks,” which can be used to make purchases in Fortnite. You can just do an exchange, meaning that 100 V-bucks equals $1, and this is a way that Epic Games make money.
Everything was going well for Fortnite as people were even buying a skin for $15 but their excitement went down when in February 4, 2019 when Electronic Art, most know as EA Sports, released Apex Legends. By the third day after the release Apex gained 10 million players. The future of Apex seemed very bright because the people was already tired of Fortnite and the same structure of the game. When Apex came out there was a new type of ideas such as reviving your teammate, being able to mark the enemy with the ping system which allowed players that do not have mic to communicate with the teammates, and a new game design and characters with superpowers. After the released of Apex, Fortnite made sure to add the new ideas of Apex in their game. Fortnite literally perfected the genre and all they had to do was emulate what they did to become as successful as they have.
Currently, the Apex Legends Battle Pass was a "disappointment" for Apex players. Ehinel Martinez said, “I think Apex was good at the beginning but with the Fortnite update the perspectives of Apex went down.” Another classmate Santiago Pinzon added, “The copy of Ideas from Fortnite are evident but the people mostly young still likes it.”
The competition of Apex legends has made Fortnite come back stronger than ever. Fortnite is adding more to the map and also adding more with new collaborations, such as with Marshmallow (an electronic DJ) in the new season. The collabs did not end there because now in the last Avengers movie “Endgame” they made a collaboration in which in the movie you could see that Thor was playing Fortnite and also in the videogame. In Fortnite they made a season in which you could play as Thanos or the Avengers called the “Endgame Mode.”
All of these actions has helped Epic Games because currently, there are 250 million players on Fortnite.