Fortnite is the "biggest competitor" to any newly launched video game, says analyst

The biggest challenge to a new game on the market is Epic Games' ongoing free-to-play juggernaut Fortnite. That's according to Circana executive director and analyst Mat Piscatella.

Speaking with Greg Miller on Kinda Funny Games about everything going on across the gaming industry, Piscatella laid out some sobering figures for the video game audience in the U.S, pointing out that 30% of players won't buy a game this year.

The players that do? Only 12% of them are buying a game once a month. The vast majority of players buy only one or two games, meaning free-to-play games like Fortnite are fighting every new release for attention.

"The biggest competitor to any new video game is Fortnite. I will die on that hill, no matter what it is, because you have to fight Fortnite before you fight anything else to get your game seen and purchased, and that's the biggest challenge happening right now," Piscatella explains, noting that in the current market, getting an hour of playtime for your game means taking it from something else.

While Fortnite first launched in 2017 as a survival game, the Battle Royale mode rapidly exploded in popularity, rapidly grabbing million of players and bringing in billions of dollars of revenue, cementing Epic Games' place as a live service developer.

Fortnite is now one of the most played games on all platforms, regularly fighting with Call of Duty HQ — Activision's launcher for all recent Call of Duty games — for first place on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, per Piscatella's reports via Circana data.

What are "Black Hole" games?

The phrase "Black hole" games refers to any big game that gets a disproportionately large chunk of player engagement, in terms of hours spent and overall spending. The majority of the black hole games are free-to-play, with titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone taking up a large amount of time and money from other games.

I've previously written about the problems the industry faces with black hole games, and how there's not a clear solution to the problem. If Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto 6 does launch this year, it'll very interesting to observe exactly how the game alters player behavior.

There's been some new live service successes, with Marvel Rivals now one of the most-played games on all platforms, but failures like PlayStation's Concord have been far more frequent over the last couple of years.