Electronic Arts (EA) and Respawn teamed up to release the latest phenomenon called Apex Legends. This game title came as a surprise to everyone, initially, teasers were posted and 2 days later the full game is available for download on PC and console.
Apex Legends has been the talk of the town this whole week. The makers of the game have attracted more than 10 million players to play the game in just 72 hours. Like Fortnite, Apex Legends is also free to play.
Apex Legends vs Fortnite (Viewership Battle)
At the moment, Apex Legends has 5 times more viewership than Fortnite. This seems to look like the weakest season ending for Fortnite. But in all honesty, Epic had seen a similar threat pop-up a few months back. Call Of Duty – Blackout had caused Fortnite to drop its viewer count when it launched. Blackout initially ranked #1 in its launch, but now the game isn’t in the “top 40 games streamed” list.
With Season 8 coming up soon, Epic hopes that they will get back their viewers on the launch day. For now, Apex Legends is way ahead in the race and so far their market strategy is on point. They had initially paid big bucks to top-streamers for broadcasting their game on launch week. But now, even after the sponsorship period is over, top-streamers are still addicted to the game and have rave reviews about it.
Shroud, Ninja and Dr Disrepect have all been streaming the game constantly for the past week. Shroud at one time had over 200k viewers.
Here’s what CourageJD had to say about both the games.
Guys…I have something terrible to admit:
I love both Fortnite and Apex Legends.
I know…I know. According to the 13 year olds on the Internet that isn’t possible but I actually do love both.
— Jack “CouRage” Dunlop (@CouRageJD) February 12, 2019
Is This the End for Fortnite?
As much as we were surprised with the release of Apex Legends, Epic must have also been caught off-guard with its launch. Season 8 launch is going to be a key factor in judging what’s in-store for Epic.
All said and done, Fortnite has 200 million players registered to its “Battle-Royale” edition of the game and Apex Legends is nowhere close to these figures. Fortnite has the added advantage of being cross-platform and is supported by almost every device capable of running the game. Apex is available only on console and PC and cross-play isn’t supported just yet.
In Fortnite, 10 million players logged in at the same time to attend a “first of its kind” virtual concert hosted by the famous DJ-Marshmello. This is a stat that isn’t going to be broken anytime soon and the magnitude of the event is something that is going to be talked about for years.
Apex Legends has 25 million players registered to its network and has had 2a million users online at its peak. All his happened in just a week, so it’s a bit early to judge if everyone will get on-board at this rate for the coming weeks. The game is free-to-play and this was a key factor in getting the whole “Blackout” community to switch over to Apex Legends.
Final Verdict?
Fortnite has attracted teenagers to a new form of socializing and is a game that is raking millions of dollars on a daily basis. This game is completely family-friendly and the game makers want to make the game appealing for both kids and adults. Different cities in the maps can be created/altered with an added element of fantasy to it. Majority of Fortnite players have already invested a lot of their time and money into the game and asking them to change loyalties isn’t going to be an easy task.
Apex Legends at the same time created history with this rapid rate of players joining the game. For players to start spending money on the game, they’d have to constantly roll-out updates on the basis on user-feedback. Epic has been active in listening out to the community, what Apex Legends plans to do in terms of updates and game-modes we’re yet to find out. Adding storylines and introducing additional characters is going to be key for Apex Legends.
For us gamers, a battle between the “free-to-play” giants is exactly what we wanted. For now, Apex has to grow 8x its existing size to reach the 200 million user mark. This isn’t easy and can’t be done overnight.
What are your thoughts on Apex Legends? How good is it compared to Fortnite.
1 comment
Fortnite is a good company but the community is rude and I have play Fortnite and all I hear is people cursing and saying to die and I played Fortnite for a year but on apex I hear a more loving community and the people are more friendly and the company cares about the players if Fortnite didn’t stop caring about its players apex wouldn’t have taken so many players but good article.
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