Could 'Apex Legends' unseat 'Fortnite' as the world's most popular video game?
It only took 30 days for 'Apex Legends' to pull in 50 million players.
America's obsession with Fortnite continues, but for how long? The multiplayer battle royale is currently the most popular video game in the world, but a new game is quickly picking up speed, and millions of players, threatening Fortnite's spot at the top. So the days of hearing about the latest Fortnite dance craze could be coming to an end for gamers and parents of younger gamers - thanks to the upstart Respawn Entertainment. The studio's hot new game Apex Legends is now gaining more traction in a shorter time span than its more famous competitor.
On its surface, Apex Legends is similar in style to Fortnite: both are third-person winner-take-all shooting games that often end in a battle royale-type scenario. But while Apex lacks the building mechanics and character subtlety of Fortnite, it's more reliant on the action, including special abilities like bombs and airstrikes, especially in the last-team-standing mode of the game. And it only took 30 days for Apex to pull in 50 million players. To put that into perspective, it took Fortnite a hundred days to hit just 45 million players, on the way to its current mark of about 200 million.
Of course, when counting players, both games are likely counting how many overall downloads the games have, not the number of active players. In that respect, Fortnite still has an advantage because it's more widespread; the game is currently available on the three major consoles, PC, and mobile devices. But Apex Legends - so far - is only available on X-Box One, Playstation 4, and PC. It's not clear when or if Respawn might open the game up to other platforms, or if there will be a cross-platform play option like there is with Fortnite. But one thing is certain: if Apex keeps adding players at this rate, it will soon become king of the gaming world.
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