The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeneysaid during his speech at the Unreal Fest held yesterday in Seattle that, while there is still uncertainty about what exactly the metaverse is, Fortnite’s continued growth, combined with the failure of many big-budget games, is evidence that it represents the future of the medium. Sweeney explained that Fortnite has achieved new concurrent player records, reaching an all-time peak of 110 million users this past holiday season. For him it is an achievement that comes in the midst of a generational change in the entire sector.
The future
“One of the manifestations of the change that we’re seeing right now is that a lot of big-budget games come out and don’t sell as well as expected,” Sweeney said. “While other games are doing incredibly strong. What we’re seeing is a trend where players gravitate towards the really big games where they can play with more friends.”
The perceived value of a game, he continued, “grows in proportion to the number of friends you can connect with,” for everything from playing together to chatting to watching virtual concerts or “doing other cool things online.”
“Some people will call it metaverse” Sweeney said, “and we don’t all agree on what that means. Some people, when they hear the word ‘metaverse’, think of what Facebook is doing with VR and now AR. Some people use the metaverse to describe everything they don’t like about the current season of Fortnite.”
Despite what you might think of new things, Fortnite for Sweeney “is new, it’s exciting and it’s something that has never happened on this scale in the history of entertainment.” According to him a large part of the game’s success is due to the collaboration of various brandslike Disney and LEGO, who have created world-class, ever-evolving experiences. “That’s really what we think it is the future of video games.”
It’s difficult to see Fortnite as the only possible future for video games, but Sweeney certainly touched a raw nerve in the industry with his words, if we think about the results of the various Concord, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Star Wars Outlaws and many others.
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