Epic Games is Raking in the Simoleons With Fortnite Mobile

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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Fortnite has only been out on mobile (iOS) since the first of April and it has already raked in $25 million. The only app in Apple's store that has done better is Netflix. Estimates are that Fortnite could earn over $500 million this year alone once it is ported to Android. This game is a money making machine and Epic needs to reinvest it into their other PC franchises and bring us some updated Unreal Tournament action or a Gears of War MMO.

Epic Games has yet to divulge when Fortnite will launch on Google Play, but, should that happen by summer—and if the title is able to maintain its current hysteria-level popularity among gamers for a few more months—our estimates indicate the game could be poised to gross more than $500 million by the end of 2018 across both platforms combined.
 
Dumping more money into UT would be a mistake IMO. Dead community that won't have a prayer versus the COD/BF series for extended multiplayer. GoW would have a chance as that was born on next gen consoles like Halo. A new UT would be like bulletstorm to me, something interesting, very short play life.
 
Can anyone explain to me how you can play this on an iphone?


You are only playing against other iphones right???
 
If they have iOS and Android versions, there is no reason they should offer a Linux (and MacOSX; not sure if they have one of these or not already) version. It is annoying enough that it is dependent on the Epic Games Launcher - I can only hope they'll also bring it to Steam; everyone having a separate launcher is a pain in the ass, especially for a company with very few actual games using said launcher. With all this cash, they can easily churn out a Linux version, especially with the game built on the latest version of the Unreal Engine and by Epic themselves!

I can't really understand the Fortnite phenomena. Don't get me wrong, the Battle Royale mode is well enough up until late game where it becomes a "how fast can you speed build a little hutch" setup; this mixed with its insanely low time-to-kill makes it more annoying. The former could be fixed if they made it so that built items did not have any HP until they were "fully" present/built into the game world. Battle Royale seems to be a focus, but I actually think the Save The World mode has more promise, but it needs polish. The co-op elements etc... are really enjoyable and there is a reasonable amount of content, but I feel the whole meta-game is bloated and overly complex. There is simply too much mostly-useless stuff dropping that can't be easily placed where it needs to go. Do I hold onto this random support civilian, do I level them up, do I put them into my "collections' book", do I retire them for XP,. Theres way too much and too complex gunk, systems on top of systems that in many cases don't add much to the game itself aside from the illusion of content. Some smart polishing to pare things down , good explanations and tutorials for the use of what you have, and smart options to send things where they need to go etc... would help. I find myself avoiding playing because the whole inventory and meta system is so cumbersome. Underneath it there could be a very good game, but sadly isn't being given the attention it deserves compared to Battle Royale.

However I can't understand the run-away appeal that would make it so profitable. From what others have said, it has to do with Battle Royale and it free-to-play focus, plus the modern battle royale gamestyle mania and streamers, leads to a metric fuckton of younger people playing. Hell, it wasn't very long ago I read articles where teachers were complaining that all their kids talk about is Fortnite, they started playing in class when iOS came out. Is this just one hell of a fad or is there something more to it?

Lastly, I am curious how Netflix (and for that matter YouTube and Tinder) tops "Daily" spending on the Apple AppStore? Unless there's something I'm missing (I have Netflix for free through T-mobile), most people are not making purchases of/through the iOS client and are subscribing to Netflix on a monthly basis paying them directly? Or is there something else going on? I can see how Fortnite and Candy Crush have in-app purchases for game items and whatnot, but Netflix, YouTube, and Tinder don't seem like the kind of thing that has a lot of in-app purchases happening, as I am to understand all three of them are primarily gaining revenue through premium subscriptions.
 
Xaeos said:
If they have iOS and Android versions, there is no reason they should offer a Linux (and MacOSX; not sure if they have one of these or not already) version. It is annoying enough that it is dependent on the Epic Games Launcher - I can only hope they'll also bring it to Steam; everyone having a separate launcher is a pain in the ass, especially for a company with very few actual games using said launcher. With all this cash, they can easily churn out a Linux version, especially with the game built on the latest version of the Unreal Engine and by Epic themselves!

I can't really understand the Fortnite phenomena. Don't get me wrong, the Battle Royale mode is well enough up until late game where it becomes a "how fast can you speed build a little hutch" setup; this mixed with its insanely low time-to-kill makes it more annoying. The former could be fixed if they made it so that built items did not have any HP until they were "fully" present/built into the game world.
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Their launcher works just fine and they've got the most popular game in the world at the moment; why the hell would they give money to Valve? You have a lot of strange demands of a company for a game you don't even like.
 
Xaeos said:
If they have iOS and Android versions, there is no reason they should offer a Linux (and MacOSX; not sure if they have one of these or not already) version. It is annoying enough that it is dependent on the Epic Games Launcher - I can only hope they'll also bring it to Steam; everyone having a separate launcher is a pain in the ass, especially for a company with very few actual games using said launcher. With all this cash, they can easily churn out a Linux version, especially with the game built on the latest version of the Unreal Engine and by Epic themselves!
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Except it is a completely different programming setup for Desktop Linux than for Android. Remember, Android is just a heavily modified kernel, with all Google stuff on top. For Linux, they'd have to make sure it plays well with X, or Wayland, or Weston, or whatever the current windowing system is.

Also, there's this matter of the hundreds of millions, if not billions of iOS and Android users, compared to the unknown but by any comparative metric insignificant number of Linux desktop users.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
Dumping more money into UT would be a mistake IMO. Dead community that won't have a prayer versus the COD/BF series for extended multiplayer. GoW would have a chance as that was born on next gen consoles like Halo. A new UT would be like bulletstorm to me, something interesting, very short play life.
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Its a shame, had so many good times with UT99 & 2004. Times, they be a changin'.

I actually logged into the UT Alpha a couple weeks ago, they REALLY messed that game up, it was almost unplayable & a shell of what I remember it being.


Never played Fortnite though. I don't get into the building aspect of these games, which is what ultimately turned me off to Fallout 4.
 
I don't get it either, but Epic should not ask questions at this point... their last many ventures have all been flops. Take the money and run, I guess.

Personally I played a few times and was like WTF and gave up. Then again, I am not the target audience...

And port to Linux? Yeah right like there are some hidden massive hordes of potential gamers out there lurking away using Mint or Ubuntu that are just dying to drop a billion bucks on some "new" gaming phenomenon? Hey I like Linux as much (actually, probably a lot more since I use it now and then) than the next guy, but there is ZERO money to be made on Linux gaming.

Before the Linux powered H bombs kill me off... I am not Anti-Linux. I use it sometimes. I just don't see anyone spending money on it as a gaming platform.
 
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Epic killed off their other game development to focus on Fortnight. When they released Battleroyal mode they had already shipped their final game, and the team had more or less moved on to some other projects like Paragon. When fortnight wasn't very successful, and battleroyal made it huge. They scrapped all other development to focus on it, since they didn't have enough employees to actually support the kind of following it had attained. They literally just have one big thing going on at Epic, and nothing else. There is nothing else planned, and won't be for a very long time until they at least get all the money out of Fortnight that they can. Remember the game was more or less crap till they copied PUBG's formula for success. Since they went the way of Valve and nerfed the graphics down to the lowest common denominator, it has a much wider potential install base than PUBG could ever have with its engine.

Unreal Tournament is pretty much just an open source project at the moment. If you look at its evolution over the last 4-5 years, you'll see almost nothing has changed.
 
Krenum said:
Its a shame, had so many good times with UT99 & 2004. Times, they be a changin'.
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Completely agree. UT is what got me started in computers, LAN parties (hosting and attending) and friends all around the world. The only flaw with those 2 games was the speed bump that was UT2003.
 
oldmanbal said:
Epic killed off their other game development to focus on Fortnight. When they released Battleroyal mode they had already shipped their final game, and the team had more or less moved on to some other projects like Paragon. When fortnight wasn't very successful, and battleroyal made it huge. They scrapped all other development to focus on it, since they didn't have enough employees to actually support the kind of following it had attained. They literally just have one big thing going on at Epic, and nothing else. There is nothing else planned, and won't be for a very long time until they at least get all the money out of Fortnight that they can. Remember the game was more or less crap till they copied PUBG's formula for success. Since they went the way of Valve and nerfed the graphics down to the lowest common denominator, it has a much wider potential install base than PUBG could ever have with its engine.

Unreal Tournament is pretty much just an open source project at the moment. If you look at its evolution over the last 4-5 years, you'll see almost nothing has changed.
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The Battle Royale mode has only been out for 7 months and just happens to be the biggest game in the world - there's every reason for them to take a "Fortnite and nothing else" approach for awhile.
 
Is this like PUBG where keyboard / mouse users dominate the mobile game?
 
Inu said:
Is this like PUBG where keyboard / mouse users dominate the mobile game?
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I assume so. Looks like poor xbox users will be getting destroyed by pc players here soon as well.


It's a completely different game on playstation.
 
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