Battle royale video game Fortnite has become the top-grossing online video game again, posting $1.8 billion in sales for 2019.
Epic Games' online video game Fortnite recorded $1.8 billion in sales in 2019, maintaining its No. 1 position from 2018, almost 3 years after its initial release. According to Nielsen's video game arm SuperData, its sales fell by 25% from 2018 but was strong enough to keep the game at the top.
The battle royale game competed with other billion-dollar games that encourage users to continue spending money on digital items, including Candy Crush, Pokémon Go and Nexon's Dungeon Fighter Online. It also defeated major video game franchises such as FIFA 19 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Michael Pachter, an analyst at private financial services firm Wedbush, said that FIFA and Modern Warfare were able to compete with Fortnite if physical sales would be included, which SuperData does not.
SuperData's report pointed out that while 2019 was weaker for premium titles due to publishers releasing fewer big hits, the video game industry overall remained strong, earning $120 billion, an increase of 4% from 2018.
Pachter said: "Fortnite continues to do well because it's fun, the developers add to the environment relatively frequently, there is a strong social angle, and it keeps adding seasonal challenges to keep the game fresh."
The SuperData reported showed that while League of Legends, the largest PC game globally, has more players than Fortnite, it only earned $1.5 billion in 2019 because its players tend to spend half as much on the game.
Fortnite converts more players via its continuous updates and battle pass subscription service and according to SuperData: "The game has been extremely successful at converting players to spenders".
Players of Fortnite consider in-game cosmetics as a status symbol and diving into the game while wearing a default outfit can make a person an immediate target by other players. It has also kept thing interesting and fresh by introducing different in-game events.
