The Fortnite ranking on console appears to have finally dropped from the top spot. After kicking butt and taking names on the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, Epic Games’ free-to-play battle royale may very well have begun its decline.
A blog post from analyst company Superdata has come out and shows the Fortnite ranking as No. 2 for the first time in a very long while. The battle royale shooter (while still quite popular) appears to have been surpassed by Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on the home console market in terms of its overall revenue. While these numbers don’t necessarily mean that Fortnite is declining in popularity, it does mean that it’s bringing in less money for Epic Games overall.
ALSO: How the Halo SPV3 mod breathes new life into Bungie’s classic shooter
A charitable interpretation would state that people are simply spending less money in-game, but there are other supporting numbers that show that the Fortnite ranking drop on console may mean that the game is in a perilous position. It recently came to pass that Twitch viewership had declined for the first time in over a year and fewer people watching Fortnite was one of the factors in this drop. Fortnite had nearly 400 million viewed hours in the second quarter of 2018 and that figure dropped to 294.2 million for the same period in 2019 — a 25% decrease.
With the decline in revenue and Twitch viewership, we may very well be seeing the first hints of the decline of Fortnite. It’s natural for the popularity of things to wax and wane and Epic Games may very well be able to coax people back into the game, but there’s no surefire solution to this issue. Whether or not the Fortnite gravy train will keep going will largely depend on what new ideas Epic Games can come up with to get people playing, watching, and — most importantly — spending money in-game once again.
