I'm sort of astonished anyone at the Verge found this surprising. No young person I know _wants_ to play Fortnite on iOS -- they all prefer consoles or PC. If they bothered to ask one, they'd know this.
Obviously, just because younger demographics on average spend more time on mobile devices, that doesn't mean that they consider phones the superior choice for gaming.
I have seen that clip multiple times, so I know what is coming and must come, but that sense of anticipation followed by what I can only describe as second-hand mortification is never lessened.
The crowd was hoping for Diablo 4. I think this was a PR mistake, not a market fit mistake. If they had done the Diablo 4 reveal first, or made it clear this was a mobile game first, then the crowd would have been much more open to what they were showing.
Just a bad headline - the specifics (~40% PlayStation and ~10% iOS) is itself interesting and not a priori obvious.
And PC revenues are quite a bit less than iOS revenues (which isn’t very surprising either because gaming PCs are expensive compared to an iPad, but it does somewhat contradict your anecdote).
Many young people only have access to iOS devices for their gaming needs, so playing on iOS == playing Fortnite. Sure, if they had the option to play on a dedicated gaming device, many would prefer it, but many do not have access to the alternative.
Right but in that scenario their usage of Fortnite on iOS won't follow normal market behavior. e.g. a cash injection to the public (stimulus, etc) would result in a bunch of iOS players converting to PC/console.
Similarly, more than 0.07% of the population of the U.S. is incarcerated. That doesn't mean they want to be there.
I bet the phone players spend less in-game because their priority would be saving up for a console before buying a ton of v-bucks.
So the role of the phone client may be less as a cash cow directly, but more as an on-ramp to get people into the game on a device they already have, but they don't become spenders until they've graduated off of it.
Except neither are out and about with you, or are in your pocket while you’re scrolling insta in your bed. I find it surprising, but then again I don’t know much about fortnite specifically.
What? You can certainly play games when you're outside (see: Pokemon GO) and you can certainly play games when you're lying in bed. Unless I missed your point?
My statement was mostly about games like Fortnite not every single game.
I see Fortnite as mostly being either played competitively or with friends.
For competitive players you're never going to play out and about or lying in bed.
When you're playing with friends you're not going to be out and about unless it's IRL on your devices (Very unlikely) and lying in bed doesn't really make sense if you want to be on voice chat. You'd rather be on your console/PC with a headset.
> If you're playing games you're not out and about or lying in bed.
I mean, I don't play games in bed, aside from a nightly crossword, but it's certainly feasible to do so. Similarly, many people play games while "out and about" (colloquially meaning, not at home). I don't anymore, but I had lots of colleagues at my last job who brought in their Nintendo Switch's to play during lunch.
