EA Says Fortnite Battle Royale is Good for the Video Game Industry and Isn’t Impacting Their Revenues
Epic Games/EAOne of the biggest games publishers in the world Electronic Arts (EA) have discussed the impact of popular Battle Royale game Fortnite on the video game industry, and claim it is not hurting them.
EA of course publish some of the best known game franchises in the world, such as FIFA and Battlefield, but, like their rivals Activision, some have suggested that Fortnite is stealing away their customers.
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However EA say that the opposite is in fact true, and that Fortnite’s immense popularity has if anything benefited the games industry as a whole by pushing it further into the mainstream.
In their quarterly earnings report, EA showed off an increase in share value of more than 3%, and CFO Blake Jorgensen explains that Fortnite is likely expanding the market and therefore benefiting everyone.
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Of course the biggest benefactors are Epic Games themselves, the developers of Fortnite, who raked in $223 million from the game in March alone, according to SuperData.
But EA, in a similar vein to Activision in their earnings call last week, have dismissed that it is taking customers away from their blockbuster titles.
“We do think in the case of Fortnite, it’s helped grow the whole marketplace.
It’s bringing younger people into the marketplace and younger people into first-person shooters. And I think that’s good for the long-run health of that category for all of us in the industry, not just one player.”
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And EA reckons the summer will be good for them, despite Fortnite having a firm grip on lots of console and PC players at the moment, because the World Cup is coming up.
With their World Cup expansion for FIFA 18 on the way, ahead of the expected FIFA 19 release there will be increased interest there.
Some analysts also suggest that similar to the rumors of the next Call of Duty featuring a battle royale mode, the next Battlefield game will too, although of course nothing is official on that front.
According to Business Insider analysts, they predict “the newest Battlefield game will follow in the footsteps of Fortnite and release a kind of “battle royale” mode.”
