Although the large revenue growth certainly derives strongly from a massive number of installs, the amount of revenue and the #1 top grossing status cannot be explained without a level of monetization heretofore unseen by cosmetics in Western markets on mobile. Until Fortnite, cosmetics-only based mobile games have not been able to achieve strong overall revenue, at least in Western markets. It’s not pay-to-progress, it’s pay-to-look-cool. Since progress isn’t made through traditional stats and level up, the only way to show off your progress is through cosmetics. (you can bring in 6 emotes which you can trigger) Loading Screen - what loading screen you see (only for yourself).Contrail - what Glider you use while falling (gotta look cool while falling).Harvesting tool - a Pickaxe is boring, why not a Scythe?.All guns, armor, ammo is scavenged in the battle royale gameplay, but a player can choose what cosmetics they want to bring into a match.įortnite allows you to select a number of cosmetic options to bring into battle: Fornite is a “free-to-win” model: they do not sell anything that could impact the balance of the battle royale gameplay. Much like in MOBAs, Fortnite’s progression and monetization only come from cosmetics. While no one but Epic can peek behind the curtain and see what their metrics are, we will speculate today! Fortnite’s Cosmetic-Driven Economy However, these results beg a question: is the revenue coming simply because of the user base size (DAU), or does the Battle Pass system actually drive higher revenue-per-user than a loot box system? In terms of KPIs, we’d be comparing ARPDAU or ideally, LTV. The fact that the game was invite-only for the first weeks or so makes the feat even more impressive. Fortnite has been steady as the top grossing game on mobile for weeks now, demolishing traditional mobile free-to-play titles, and outpacing all other battle royale style games on mobile in both downloads and revenue. Regardless of what you think of the choice - Fortnite’s revenue shows they’ve done something right. Yet for their Battle Royale system, they chose to go against this. It’s not as if Epic hadn’t thought of making it a loot box driven economy - Fortnite’s own “Save the World” mode is a loot box driven economy which you buy llama-themed pinatas that contain random gameplay-impacting items. Fortnite, for all of its smart decisions and flaws, made one key choice months after its launch: it wasn’t going to monetize based on loot boxes, instead, it was going to monetize off of its Battle Pass system. However, while the Battle Royale genre continues to heat up, I’d like to focus on a specific topic: the Battle Pass system as the monetization driver. Skins don’t move units like power does, yet in a competitive game you as a player want everyone to be operating on a level playing field.Fortnite is by far the most viewed and streamed game on YouTube.

This is why you may have noticed that the devs talked a lot about making skins more accessible, but they didn’t say a thing about the fact that they have heroes in the battle pass.

Kind of a follow-up to #1, but a big issue with F2P is that it also incentivizes selling power. Obviously a company is going to want to reinvest to titles that make the most money, but it’s not a one-to-one deal.

Profit generated from a game isn’t necessarily put back into the game that generated it, but instead goes to corporate profits, which are then allocated by discretion. This is why F2P games so frequently feel like garbage even when they make tons of money. The game in F2P effectively becomes a cost center instead of a revenue center, and a business is incentivized to invest resources into revenue centers, that being the MTX. There are a few issues with F2P as a business model from a consumer standpoint.

When will fortnite go ftp