Mobile may not be Fortnite’s main platform, but it’s proving to be a cash cow for Epic Games all the same. A new report from analytics firm Sensor Tower says that the game is averaging over $1 million a day in player spending, and the firm is projecting that with an Android release, Fortnite mobile could earn as much as $500M this year alone if these trends hold.
So far this month, Fortnite has earned $25M on mobile, and we’re barely halfway through April. Add an Android release to that and no, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that $500M could be in the cards for the year, depending on when the game expands past Apple devices.
One funny stat that Sensor Tower points out is the fact US iPhone users have spent more time playing Fortnite than they have on Tinder this month. Not a particularly meaningful comparison I suppose, but kind of hilarious all the same.
How much is Fortnite making overall? That’s a trickier question. The last estimate we have is from Superdata, which said that Fortnite made $126 million in February, besting PUBG’s $103 million, but it seems likely March was an even larger month, and I have not seen figures for it yet. What’s clear is that Fortnite is on track to being a billion-dollar game in short order, and we may not have seen its peak yet.
Fortnite out-earning PUBG is particularly noteworthy given that PUBG costs $30 while Fortnite is free-to-play and is only earning money through its Battle Pass/cosmetic microtransactions. But both games have achieved levels of success other titles only dream of, which is why we’re starting to see other competitors emerge from Radical Heights to rumors that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is forgoing a single player campaign for its own battle royale mode.
For all the insanity surrounding Fortnite, however, there is still one game that holds all the revenue records. That would Pokémon GO, which made $600 million just three months after its launch, a metric that Fortnite can’t hit on mobile, and it’s already been out for much longer than three months elsewhere. Granted, Pokémon GO was a worldwide craze the likes of which the industry has never seen, but it just provides a bit of context that as big as Fortnite is, GO was bigger. With that said, I’m going to guess that Fortnite will end up having more staying power in the end. Pokémon GO is still big (comparatively) in the mobile space, but Fortnite has multiple platforms at its disposal and continues to add content at an incredibly fast clip (Pokémon GO, meanwhile, took a year and a half to add quests).
Hopefully we’ll hear more about an Android release for Fortnite soon, and given how quick Epic has been expanding platforms, I would expect that to be very soon, indeed.
Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook. Pick up my sci-fi novel series, The Earthborn Trilogy, which is now in print, online and on audiobook.
