It’s pointless to spend much time saying how much of a cultural juggernaut Fortnite has become. When a game is popular enough to officially crossover with franchises like Avengers, Stranger Things, and Star Wars on a regular basis, its success is obvious. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise many to hear that Fortnite continues to be the highest-grossing video game out there, even after seeing a noticeable decrease in revenue in 2019.
This week, data analysis firm SuperData released its latest annual review of how games fared financially in the past year. Unsurprisingly, its findings revealed that Epic Games’ battle royale shooter took the top spot, pulling in an immense total of $1.8 billion in 2019. That’s a 25% drop from the $2.4 billion Fortnite made in 2018, but that’s still a large enough haul to put the game well ahead of the other games in SuperData’s “top 10” list, including popular titles like League of Legends ($1.5 billion) and Pokemon GO ($1.4 billion)
From the data provided, it’s clear that Fortnite has more than succeeded in compelling players to spend money on the free-to-play title through its vast selection of cosmetic items and battle passes. Not only that, it’s managed to keep its player base engaged through a busy 2019 that saw multiple in-game events take place, the most dramatic of which being “The End” of Fortnite that left the game unplayable for a few days ahead of its big Chapter 2 relaunch.
Overall, free-to-play games dominated the gaming market last year, with in-game purchases from these (especially mobile games) accounting for a colossal 74% of all money spent on digital games, contributing to a year-over-year increase of 4% across the entire industry, according to SuperData. By contrast, premium games saw a year-over-year decrease of 5%, largely due to 2019 seeing fewer AAA releases than 2018, a year that saw the debut of hugely-anticipated games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man, and Monster Hunter World.
Going back to Fortnite, it’s possible the game may see further decline in popularity during the coming year, given the ever-growing competition in both the free-to-play market and the battle royale genre it currently reigns over. That said, Epic Games continues to offer players new events and content (as well as new features like split-screen support), suggesting Fortnite won’t be slowing down much in 2020. As such, the game has a strong chance of showing up at the top of SuperData’s review of 2020 a year from now.
Fortnite is free-to-play on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: SuperData