Epic used Fortnite OG to lure players back to a very different game

You might say that Fortnite is coming into a brand new section. With the launch of Lego Fortnite, Rocket Racing, and Fortnite Competition, the sport is now greater than a well-liked battle royale — it’s a platform designed to accommodate a number of completely different sorts of experiences. That shift was preceded by an occasion that introduced the sport again to its roots with Fortnite OG, which returned to the unique battle royale map alongside basic weapons and automobiles. And that was a really intentional technique from Epic Video games.

In response to Epic’s government VP Saxs Persson, the launch of Fortnite OG was meant to create a stir forward of this rollout of recent video games. “We had a aim of re-activating plenty of our 500 million accounts that possibly weren’t taking part in Fortnite anymore, and thought Fortnite was simply battle royale,” he explains. “You want them to concentrate to see that is really very completely different than what we have been six years in the past. OG was step one.” It definitely appears to have labored in that regard; Epic beforehand mentioned that Fortnite had 100 million gamers in November, the sport’s greatest month ever.

The second step is that this week’s rollout of these three Epic-developed video games, every geared toward a unique viewers. It’s nonetheless too early to inform if any of them might be a success, however early indicators are encouraging. On the time of this writing, almost 2 million individuals have been taking part in Lego Fortnite, whereas greater than 800,000 have been taking part in Fortnite Competition, each of which had topped the standard battle royale. Persson says the aim isn’t essentially to surpass the sport’s present fundamental mode, although.

“The last word aim is that that’s doable [for another game to overtake battle royale],” he says. “We’re not constructing one thing with the concept that battle royale will simply fall by the wayside. That workforce is as wholesome because it’s ever been. This isn’t a zero sum sport; we anticipate the ecosystem to develop.”