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As the Nexus War begins in Fortnite’s ultimate bankruptcy, Epic Games offers its biggest bond to date, incorporating Marvel heroes and villains such as Iron Man, Wolverine, Storm and Doctor Doom into Battle Royale.
But a part of the company’s player base may not be able to register for fun.
The Fortnite check-in update is the first to exclude players on iOS and Android devices, as the company’s legal battles with Apple and Google have resulted in an ability to upgrade Fortnite on those platforms. This also eliminates the cross-play skill between iOS/Android consumers and any other platform that updates the game. And staying left can just be a test of loyalty to the fans.
In 2019, Epic said Fortnite had about 250 million active accounts. Last year, the game was downloaded about a hundred million times from Apple’s App Store in its first five months of availability, according to the Washington Post. Even if the player base is not as highly cellular as it implies, there are still tens of millions of players who enjoy the game only through their phones and tablets.
Courts will in fact play a role in the development of the fight between Apple and Epic, as they have already done, but it is also a case in which the public will be a factor. Epic is courting other developers to support it as it seeks to replace the way Apple monetizes the App Store. Several, adding Microsoft, have joined the fight. And Epic has spent a lot of time organizing a crusade designed to accompany its players in the war, from a film parody of the well-known 1984 Apple ad to an in-game mask and a fashionable hashtag on social media.
But when you’re the king of the hill in any area, there’s someone who shoots you. And there’s no bigger hill in the game right now than the Battle Royale genre, so don’t be surprised if you see a marketing boost for PUBG and all of Fortnite’s other competitions in the coming weeks.
Epic’s position turns out to be willing to threaten to mark a percentage of its audience with the greater goal of getting Apple to replace its policies. The company has conducted an internal threat investigation to determine, unlike the dollar, how far it is willing to fight.
Analysts acknowledge that there is a threat to potentially alienating players, but given Fortnite’s dominant position in the market and the ferocity of its fans, they say it is a takeover.
“In terms of feedback from the network, I don’t think I’m going to see many other people fleeing Fortnite, for example, for Apex Legends,” says P.J. McNealy, CEO of Digital World Research. “For starters, you’ll have a rate of grass abandonment. It’ll speed it up a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to replace Epic’s position.”
The word war between Epic and Apple is reminiscent of the music industry war in 2009, when the iTunes Store still began to provide DRM-free music files. This came here for a number of reasons, but it was basically due to the fact that most primary music publishers came together to resist Apple and Amazon’s developing festival. Consumers weren’t happy about having to look to another platform to get what they wanted, but they did. And Apple, but it all capitul.
Epic hopes to recreate this type of tidal replacement in the App Store. And he’s willing to bet part of his player base to adopt this replacement, betting that anyone who loses will return when the fight ends, especially if that translates into a decrease in the costs of the V-bucks.
However, the X factor here is equally interesting: what happens if Epic wins?
“This is the tip of the iceberg for the industry in terms of margin structures,” mcNealy says. “If you can get Apple to bend or break in that 30%, then you’ll have ramifications in the Amazon store, in the Microsoft store, in the Sony store, in the Android store, make your choice.”
Consumers will welcome low costs. The question is, what are they willing to sacrifice in war to get them? And those who leave should return when they can play the last edition of Fortnite again?