Warzone Hits 30 Million Players In Ten Days, But How Does It Compare To Its BR Rivals

Warzone hits 30 million players in just ten days. Infinity Wards’s free to play Battle Royale has burst out of the blocks and is quickly establishing itself as one of the big hitters in the Battle Royale genre. Fortnite, Apex Legends and PUBG are all massive games with their own established following. But how does Warzone’s early success compare to its rivals? And can Warzone maintain this growth over the coming weeks and months.

Warzone had already passed six million players inside its first 24 hours of release. The game hit 15 million players inside three days and then doubled that figure inside ten days to 30 million players. While these numbers are certainly impressive. Just how do they stack up against Warzone’s biggest rivals? Lets take a look.

Fortnite

Fortnite was released back in September 2017. It had a much slower start to life than Warzone – taking two weeks to reach 10 million players. It took six weeks for the player count to hit 20 million. By March 2018 Fortnite had an install base of about 45 million players. Come June of 2018 Fortnite’s player count had rocketed to 125 million with 40 million people playing it at least once a month.

In late 2019 Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney reported that Fortnite had passed the 250 million player mark. During 2018 Fortnite is estimated to have made $2.4 billion. Although in 2019 this number dropped by 25% to $1.8 billion. Fortnite has been, and still remains a phenomenal success story. Like I said earlier, it was a slow burner to start compared to Warzone but it has gone on to become on of the biggest games in the industry.

Apex Legends

Apex Legends was released back in February 2019. Respawn’s take on the Battle Royale genre came out of nowhere and very quickly amassed a huge player base. Apex had 2.5 million players within 24 hours and inside three days it had smashed through the 10 million player mark. Before the end of its first week that number had reached 25 million. By the end of the month more than 50 million players had downloaded it.

That first month alone was worth around $92 million in revenue for Respawn and EA. Unfortunately for Apex, growth slowed significantly in its second month with revenue dropping to $24 million.

In July 2019 EA told investors that Apex had 8 to 10 million players a week. In October of last year, when Season 3 launched, Apex Legends had a player base of around 70 million. It made around $45 million in that month. Although Apex remains a successful and profitable game, it never managed to maintain the explosive growth it enjoyed in its first few weeks after release.

PUBG

PUBG is not a free game. We have to keep that in mind when directly comparing it to Fortnite, Apex Legends and Warzone. When we talk numbers in PUBG we are talking about sales. Although, I will discuss the numbers attached to the free to play PUBG Mobile later.

PUBG was released on Steam in March 2017 in early access form. By the second week of April it had sold over 1 million copies. Sales doubled to 2 million copies by the end of May. Come December of that year over 30 million copies of PUBG had been sold across PC and Xbox. Although the fast majority of these sales were on PC.

PUBG was estimated to make $900 million in 2017. In June 2018 the game had blown past 50 million copies sold and revenue for that year was calculated to be over $1 billion. By December 2019 PUBG had sold over 60 million units worldwide. Again, I have to stress that these numbers represent sales. PUBG might have a less players than its rivals. But its players all handed over their hard earned cash to play it and most of those are still playing it to this day.

The free to play PUBG Mobile is a different kind of animal. By August 2018 it had over 100 million downloads. In October of that year that number had surpassed 225 million. That’s nearly as many players as Fortnite has on all platforms. In 2019 PUBG Mobile made roughly $1.5 billion in Revenue. The game has now been downloaded over 600 million times and remains one of the biggest games on mobile in the world.

Conclusion

Warzone has got off to blistering start. But as you can see from the stats above, early success does not mean sustained growth. Apex Legends can attest to that. Also, been a serious military shooter will only attract a certain type of player. Like Apex, it’ll be interesting to see the numbers for Warzone after two months.

Fortnite on the other hand was slow to get started but look at where it has ended up. Of course, its bright and colourful aesthetic might make it appeal to a bigger audience. Fortnite is loved by gamers young and old and by both genders. 35% of Fortnite’s user base is female. This is by far the biggest female attach rate for any shooting game on the market.

Again, comparing Warzone’s initial numbers to PUBG is harsh. PUBG is all about sales and PUBG Mobile, while free to play like Warzone, is a mobile game.

The massive numbers attached to all these games do tell us something though. There is still a huge demand and apatite for Battle Royale games. I think Warzone will quickly find its place in the pack. I’m sure it’ll have a loyal fan-base built up in no time. Unfortunately though, Warzone has one major problem facing it. COD games are released ever year. Will this version of COD continue to hold players attention when COD 2020 hits shops shelves later this year. I think its a fair question and one that Fortnite, Apex and PUBG doesn’t have to answer.

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