Fortnite has certainly struck a chord with the Battle Royale, as over 1 million players gathered on the servers at launch. Is Fortnite on its way to seriously competing with PUBG?
Fortnite is already a decent success as a PvE coop shooter, despite a significant grind factor, which even surprised the developers at Epic. Even more impressive is that the PvP mode Battle Royale, released on September 26, is equally successful and boasts over a million players at launch.
The parallels to the huge launch success of genre leader PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds are undeniable.
Free2Play Battle Royale on PC, PS4 and Xbox One
The reason for Fortnite: Battle Royale’s great success is certainly the free availability of the game. Unlike PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the PvP mode of Fortnite is completely free. Not even the controversial real-money loot boxes are available yet.
So, those who were previously put off by the 30 euros for PUBG can have a lot of fun with Fortnite.
Another important factor giving Fortnite a huge competitive advantage over PUBG is that Fortnite has been available on consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for quite some time. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is not expected to be released on Xbox One until Q4 2017.
A release for PlayStation 4 has still not even been officially confirmed. Meanwhile, console gamers have been impatiently waiting since release and are all the more eagerly diving into the Battle Royale alternative Fortnite.
Fortnite vs. PUBG creates involuntary advertising
Since Fortnite: Battle Royale and PUBG look quite similar in gameplay at first glance, there has already been a lot of conflict between the developers Epic (Fortnite) and Bluehole (PUBG). According to Bluehole, it is not acceptable for the business partner at Epic (Bluehole uses the Unreal 4 Engine from Epic via license) to blatantly copy the PUBG success model.
However, the entire action backfired on Bluehole, as it sounded like Bluehole was claiming ownership of the entire Battle Royale genre, which they certainly did not invent. Rather, PUBG is clearly inspired by H1Z1: King of the Kill and various mods for Arma and DayZ.
Thus, the big fuss drew even more players to Fortnite and tarnished Bluehole’s reputation.
It remains exciting to see how the battle between the two Battle Royale games develops further. Read here for our first impressions of the Battle Royale mode of Fortnite.
