Research firm SuperData published a new games industry report today, focusing on the Battle Royale phenomenon.
The document, of which we've grabbed a few snapshots below, reveals that Epic's Fortnite Battle Royale broke the $1 billion revenue milestone from its in-app purchases (the game itself is free to play on all platforms).
As you can see, the revenue chart keeps going higher and according to SuperData, Fortnite Battle Royale even managed to get some lapsed console players back into the action.
The report then pointed out that in May Fortnite reached the astounding number of 574 million hours viewed on Twitch, leaving only dust to see for the second title on the chart (League of Legends).
However, when taken as a whole it's the Battle Royale genre that's literally dwarfing everything else with almost 700 million hours viewed in May. Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games are somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 million hours viewed in that month, with shooters, collectible card games (CCG) and sports games ranked even lower.
Developers of non-Battle Royale games shouldn't fret yet, anyway. According to SuperData, the growth of BR titles doesn't seem to negatively affect the viewership numbers of other genres, though the report does suggest that gamers followed by younger viewers are most at risk at losing audience to some Battle Royale game.
Looking forward to the future, SuperData expects a 625% growth in revenue for BR games from 2017 to 2018, particularly thanks to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout mode entering the market. While total battle royale revenue was $1.7 billion in 2017, the report estimates $12.6 billion in 2018 and $20.1 billion in 2019 thanks to a substantial growth expected next year for the premium console segment.
Lastly, SuperData analyzed the Battle Royale audience and revealed that 36% of the audience came from shooter games, 11% from roleplaying games or action/adventure games, 9% from action games, 8% from sports games and another 8% from survival/crafting focused titles, with the remaining 18% listed as a mix of additional genres.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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