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[The Verge] Fortnite’s cash cow is PlayStation, not iOS, court documents reveal
- Thread starter --R
- Start date
I think you could argue xbox player waste more money on mtx but not on games
we don't even know xbox install base....
a lot of napkin math here.
Most likely as PlayStation and Xbox are making absolute bank off of games like Fortnite. That 30% cut adds up, even on microtransactions.
But yeah, it was plainly obvious that Epic's actual target was consoles, and this indicates what the stakes are.
Whoever has more players has more casual users. Sony has a lot of players that dilute their pool so to speak, so this is to be expected.
Why wouldn't the expectation be Xbox players would actually spend less because they already have to pay for Gold? Or that PS users would make that up by spending that "saved" money on more MTX?
Again, Xbox One had an advantage back at the start of the gen according to Ubisoft financials. It's a trend.
What does that have to do with what the average Fortnite user spends in the game? You do know the average PS4 user buys 2 games a year. Xbox has actually been hinted to have a larger Tie Ratio than PS4 in the past, so the "more games" argument means nothing when at worst, Xbox and PS4 users buy the same rate of games.
Xbox sales are still the vast majority of unit sales and Game Pass users have to spend money every month to even get those games, so it all cancels out anyway. Even then, Ubisoft financials pointed this out long before any of this happened.
Yeah, it's why I pointed it out as having been a thing for years.
It's ~50M
It's not that clear cut - there are several PC exclusive IPs out there that have as many (or more) concurrent users as entire Steam (consequently larger than any console store-front save perhaps PSN - and thus also larger than any single console title). Though of course - spending patterns are different across platforms.
I imagine a large portion of players on PlayStation don't even have active payment details saved to their account. A paywall keeps out people unwilling to pay for online content/services.
Okay close to 50% is ridiculous, especially when it is such a massive game like Fortnite that is popular and accessible on multiple platforms.
Psychology - after you spend once - you are more likely to spend again (and more) - and the reverse also holds. Statistics (at least those I've seen to date) bear that out in practice, that's why companies try to get people to pony up the Credit Card as soon as possible (Eg. Apple).
Also the 'userbase size' comparison is meaningless, just like registered players mean nothing to F2P titles. What matters is active players (if you are going to compare average spend) - and none of us have those numbers.
So we don't know it still.
Probably close to the estimate but still weird to make small percentage differences math based on it for a random point.
Anyways, bigger install base means more of the larger gaming audience that joins. Kinda like PS+ sub numbers is 80% for PS5 owners compared to overall Plus numbers being less than 50% if we added PS4 base.
I'm sure if Vita and PS4 ratios were compared we would have found out Vita players spend much more than PS4 players cause that how it works with larger install base.
It's not that surprising that consoles generate more revenue than the PC version or mobile. They have a huge playerbase and Fortnite fits that audience well.
PC does have its audience but a Destiny player isn't necessarily a Fortnite one. Just like someone who plays League of Legends or Counter-Strike might not play it either.
Fortnite is also fairly recent to mobile compared to other platforms. People just have their preferences set already.
PC does have its audience but a Destiny player isn't necessarily a Fortnite one. Just like someone who plays League of Legends or Counter-Strike might not play it either.
Fortnite is also fairly recent to mobile compared to other platforms. People just have their preferences set already.
PC gaming is big globally, but it skews really heavily to low end machines and craptops running league of legends, and in countries that either don't have consoles markets available, or are developing countries. The raw numbers aren't the full picture, it's like Android vs iOS all over again. High end PC gaming is a niche/tiny market.
I'm glad Fortnite isn't first person, but I bet that also contribute to it not being near console in popularity, among other things like more PC centered games offering more options to free to play gamers (Mobas, strategy, competitors like Valorant and such).
I just wanted Save The World to hit F2P like it was supposed to, I should have bought it when I thought about it, but I guess it's a good thing I didn't. Fortnite BR murdered it too.
I just wanted Save The World to hit F2P like it was supposed to, I should have bought it when I thought about it, but I guess it's a good thing I didn't. Fortnite BR murdered it too.
That's entirely normal.
The smaller your userbase is, the bigger your share of hardcore users will be.
Given iOS was doing US$500-700k a day when they got pulled from the Store, it was still quite the healthy contributor.
Huh. So much for the narrative of mobile taking over mainstream gaming I guess? We heard a ton about PUBG and Fortnite and blah blah on mobile, I thought it was huge.
Now as an old, I do have to lol a bit at the shocked PC players. There's a reason every big mainstream genre PC series jumped to make console the lead platform in the mid 2000s as soon as it was feasible (Call of Duty, *shock, Elder Scrolls, Far Cry etc). There was a lot of gnashing of teeth at the time, including from me, but now everyone just accepts that these are console games with PC ports. Way more money on console than with the tiny niche of high end PC players.
Now as an old, I do have to lol a bit at the shocked PC players. There's a reason every big mainstream genre PC series jumped to make console the lead platform in the mid 2000s as soon as it was feasible (Call of Duty, *shock, Elder Scrolls, Far Cry etc). There was a lot of gnashing of teeth at the time, including from me, but now everyone just accepts that these are console games with PC ports. Way more money on console than with the tiny niche of high end PC players.
I'm legitimately shocked that PC is so low in terms of revenue...
This is actually very interesting question. One can guess what the number would be if the game was available on Steam.
This is actually very interesting question. One can guess what the number would be if the game was available on Steam.
People spend money on console, people are used to getting gaming for free on mobile.
Why is Tim not going after Sony then for a lesser than the 70/30 split fee? This whole thing sounds odd going after Apple but not consoles.
Because:
A. Sony and Epic are close partners, Sony has even invested in the company multiple times so they're not likely to want to burn that bridge
B. Epic would take a massive financial hit if Sony pulled an Apple and removed the game from PSN
This doesn't surprise me at all.
7% of their total revenue which apparently equals $700 million. If you consider that iOS takes ~33% of all IAP revenue, their actual earnings from iOS would have been $1.05 billion. Unless my EOD work brain math is totally stupid and wrong, that's a fucking huge number that they'd probably get in a fight with Apple over.
7% of their total revenue which apparently equals $700 million. If you consider that iOS takes ~33% of all IAP revenue, their actual earnings from iOS would have been $1.05 billion. Unless my EOD work brain math is totally stupid and wrong, that's a fucking huge number that they'd probably get in a fight with Apple over.
True, but Fortnite can run on a toaster (and phones obviously) so it squarely fits in the larger PC market, not the high-end.
Spending habits are another matter - I've seen historical data suggesting high-end PC gaming audience is averse to microtransactions - but that doesn't really explain the above of course.
Makes sense, honestly. Playstation had the highest install-base last gen and the game is ridiculously popular.
Is there a summary of what the fuck is going on??? I have no idea what Apple and Epic are in court.
My brother bought his kids a Pro just for fortnite and minecraft. That's all they play...and I know he'll get them a PS5 for those 2 games when he can find one in a store.
It blows my mind.
It blows my mind.
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Epic implemented it's own payment processor inside of Fortnite on iOS and Android (along with offering a 20% discount if you used Epic's processor instead of Apple or Android). This was a violation of the terms of service. Apple and Google both pulled the game from their store.
Epic knew this was going to happen so they immediately released their pre-planned advertising campaign ("Free Fortnite") and legal action, like within hours.
The case against Apple and Google are different. Specifically against Apple, they are attempting to argue that they should be able to use their own payment processor and that they should be able to sell software on iOS without the use of the App store (i.e. third parties running their own app store on iOS like they can on Android). They are attempting to use anti-trust regulation to do this.
Oh dude, you missed one hell of a ride. Here's a good breakdown of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
A penny pinched is a penny earned. They want every revenue stream.
Buy them the Crash trilogy and Crash 4! Save platformers!
I seem to remember something about Free Fortnite. Thanks for the info!
So is this a good thing for consumers? I can't really tell, ha.