Fortnite doesn’t seem to have any end in sight. Its momentum is growing, if anything, not close to slowing down. It is by far the biggest game in the world, for the second year in a row, and their sales numbers reflect that.
In 2019, Fortnite raked in a cool $1.8 billion in sales, the second highest single-year sales in videogame history (Fortnite has the top spot from 2018). And this is for a free-to-play game, remember.
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Of course, Epic Games have many inventive ways of making money off of the free-to-play model. But the most important is to make the game as accessible and fun as possible to draw people in. Then keep them engaged with unique content, special character tie-ins, new game mechanics, competitive gameplay and much more to get them spending.
The Battle Pass subscription is $10 per month, giving content the free base game doesn’t include. Other than that, there are a myriad of in-game purchases available, such as clothing, weapons, dance moves and player reactions. All this brings in the heaps of cash from 125 million active players worldwide.
The movie tie-ins have seemed to grow that active player base significantly, including Avengers and Star Wars themes and characters. Fortnite even debuted a scene from the latest Star Wars movie in-game before the movie was released.
According to Nielsen, the videogame industry had a good 2019 as a whole. Sales increased by 4% to about $120 billion, with more than half of that contributed by the mobile gaming industry ($64 billion). PC gaming came in at second ($29 billion) followed by consoles ($15 billion).
Another major driver of Fortnite interest has been the eSports tournaments they have been hosting, including the first World Cup in 2019 where the winner (a 16 year-old, mind you) netted a smooth $3 million with total prize money exceeding $30 million.
One of the reasons for Fortnite’s massive active player pool is the fact that it is available on basically every single platform. It also has cross-platform competition, which is very impressive if you consider that includes players from the highest-end PC to the most mediocre smartphone. It will be interesting to see what Fortnite does in 2020 to remain top and whether that active player pool sticks with them.
After all, gamers can be fickle, moving on to the next big thing quickly when it comes around.
