When you nonetheless consider Fortnite as a colourful, cartoony battle royale sport, you may be stunned to study the extent of Epic’s true ambitions.
Fortnite’s massive, chaotic combat to the demise matches should still get high billing, however Epic has steadily been increasing the horizons of its marquee sport to be extra of a sport platform than a easy standalone sport. Fortnite’s psychedelic reside occasions, kaiju Ariana Grande concerts and its infinite user-generated sandbox worlds have been all hints about its remaining vacation spot.
X might by no means be an everything app, however Fortnite is already an the whole lot sport. And it simply obtained loads greater.
Speedy fireplace over consecutive days final week, Epic launched three new games throughout the sport, beginning with the survival title Lego Fortnite on Thursday. Fortnite Pageant, a rhythm sport from the studio behind Rock Band, and Rocket Racing, a fast-paced racing sport from the makers of Rocket League adopted shortly thereafter.
Whereas Fortnite’s common modes like Zero Construct and basic Battle Royale racked up respectable numbers over the weekend and folks additionally dipped their toes into the opposite two new video games, Lego Fortnite debuted on an entire totally different stage.
Epic and Lego’s new Minecraft/Animal Crossing hybrid (extra on that in our evaluate later) peaked at 2.45 million concurrent players shortly after launch. Over the weekend it constantly floated round those self same lofty peaks and by Monday sat round 1.1 million gamers — itself an epic tally that might put loads of hits on the Steam charts to disgrace. The reside “Big Bang” occasion that launched the trio of recent video games a bit of over per week in the past noticed 11.6 million concurrent gamers, attendance within the ballpark of Fortnite’s reside exhibits for artists like Marshmello or Travis Scott.
Lego Fortnite is only one nook of Epic’s multiverse, but it surely’s clearly the most popular one for the time being. Fortnite’s grand complete of concurrent on-line gamers sits someplace approach above that (combining all Fortnite Artistic modes, ranked play, Battle Royale, and many others.) however largely it’s noteworthy {that a} family-friendly sport in a completely totally different style is bringing on this a lot buzz. If Lego Fortnite can preserve its momentum with a gradual drip of compelling content material that deepens the sport, its free-to-play, enjoyable for the entire household multiplayer expertise might have nowhere to go however up.
