Fortnite Tops $100 Million in Sales from iOS in First 90 Days, PUBG Not So Much

The divide between the two is quite large, it seems. 

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Both popular battle royale titles, Fortnite and PUBG, have mobile iterations. It's very clear, however, which one has come out on top when it comes to their battle for supremacy, however. Can you guess? If you chose Fortnite, you're absolutely correct. Only 90 days after coming to iOS in the first place, it's generated $100 million in revenue, which puts it at 35 percent more than the battle royale title Knives Out, on iOS.

What about PUBG, though? Yes, we're well aware that PUBG Mobile exists, in fact we just reported that it just got its own series of updates, but it's nowhere on the map, as it's only been monetizing itself over the last 60 days. During that time, however, it's not even reached $100 million in spending, grossing over just $5.2 million on iOS according to data from Sensor Tower.

That's part of the strategy that factors in from Tencent's update this week for PUBG Mobile, which just introduced the new Royale Pass for the game, a lot like what features in Fortnite Mobile with the Battle Pass, right down to the challenges and other goodies you get for purchasing it. The developer's efforts will have to quickly do some work for PUBG Mobile, especially if PUBG Corp. wants the numbers to balance out in any real way. But that may not be the answer, either.

"Even apart from Battle Pass sales, we see Fortnite growing its momentum on mobile, and there are no indications of it slowing there-or anywhere else-as it continues its reign as the world's most popular game," said Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower. It looks like it all comes down to popularity, and PUBG Mobile just isn't matching the same kind of mass appeal we're seeing with Fortnite. It'll be interesting to see what happens between the two titles in the future.

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Fueled by horror, rainbow-sugar-pixel-rushes, and video games, Brittany is a Senior Editor at Shacknews who thrives on surrealism and ultraviolence. Follow her on Twitter @MolotovCupcake and check out her portfolio for more. Like a fabulous shooter once said, get psyched!

From The Chatty
  • reply
    June 20, 2018 4:19 PM

    Brittany Vincent posted a new article, Fortnite Tops $100 Million in Sales from iOS in First 90 Days, PUBG Not So Much

    • reply
      June 20, 2018 4:25 PM

      damn wtf how are people enjoying a touchscreen fps!

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        June 20, 2018 4:29 PM

        it's a 3rd-person shooter and not fps

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        June 20, 2018 4:38 PM

        Same reason Bethesda is leaning even harder into mobile games: Apple sells over 200M iOS devices a year.

        More customers = more money, doesn’t matter if PCs or consoles give a better experience. The Switch is a better portable experience but 20M+ units sold over a year and change is what Apple sells in a matter of weeks.

        Control quality ultimately doesn’t matter as much as convenience. Todd Howard comparing the number of people who played Fallout Shelter vs every other game he made was shocking.

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        June 20, 2018 4:41 PM

        Honestly it's pretty surprising how well it works on a phone. Plus the phone and pc version are actually tied together in terms of accounts/crossplay.

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        June 20, 2018 5:01 PM

        I bet so many of them don't know any better tbh

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        June 20, 2018 5:08 PM

        I saw a father and his kid playing Fortnite on their phones together at a bar. It looked like they were having a lot of fun

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          June 20, 2018 5:10 PM

          I bet they were both drunk

      • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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        June 20, 2018 8:28 PM

        Probably mostly people who have no affinity for kb/m or controller gaming whatsoever. When mobile is just the way you play video games, period, you're used to it.

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        June 20, 2018 9:17 PM

        M+KB is always the best but a touchscreen FPS can work better than you think

        http://schnapple.com/wolfenstein-3d-and-doom-on-ios-11/

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      June 20, 2018 4:39 PM

      One game spends so much time trying to be the next big esport while the other stays lean and mean and drops new content regularly.

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        June 20, 2018 4:48 PM

        yeah, pubg developers fucked up. Just inexperience compared to epic; they had the chance to seize the moment; but they were too busy implementing crates, hats, weapon skins, t shirts, trying to get into E sports etc; instead of just fixing the fucking game. By the time the *insane* cheating problem got cleaned up and they had gotten performance acceptable (and lowered the number of game breaking bugs); fortnite had eaten their lunch. Blue hole got everything it deserved for doing things the wrong way.

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          June 20, 2018 6:50 PM

          Imagine how Daybreak (H1z1) feels!

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            June 20, 2018 7:55 PM

            It was inevitable that they'd eventually get clowned by developers like Epic or DICE who know wtf they're doing.

            These guys had years to get their houses in order and they thought people actually liked the jank, when instead people liked those games in spite of the jank

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              June 21, 2018 2:20 AM

              [deleted]

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                June 21, 2018 2:28 AM

                I'm talking about Brendan Greene's prior work modding for older games like Arma 2, Arma 3, and H1Z1. PUBG feels like a clear iteration on those games (janky feels and interfaces and all) while Epic/DICE/Hi-Rez/etc have been focused on usability and polish from the ground-up

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          June 21, 2018 3:56 AM

          ^^^^^

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        June 20, 2018 4:51 PM

        that fortnite pro am event was pretty awesome too, I was skeptical of battle royale from a spectator point of view but it wasnt too terrible. it was getting hype near the end when it was just 10 people left

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          June 20, 2018 6:55 PM

          End of games in Fortnite are sooooo fun and tense.

          (To be fair, pubg is great then too).

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        June 20, 2018 7:04 PM

        Pubg also drops new content.

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          June 20, 2018 7:54 PM

          Not on the weekly schedule Fortnite does. Streamers schedule around weekly patches, which then feeds into more visibility and more players. Its super smart

          • Zek legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
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            June 20, 2018 8:29 PM

            It's really pretty astonishing how quickly Fortnite gets updated. Epic is just throwing every living breathing human they can find onto the game.

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              June 20, 2018 9:52 PM

              When you make 100-300 million a month you can be very liberal with your pool of workers.

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            June 20, 2018 9:21 PM

            [deleted]

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          June 20, 2018 9:36 PM

          PUBG is on a laughable dev timeline. To this day it's still a sloppy janky mess more concerned with their posture as a "pro esport" meanwhile Fortnight drops amusing new game mechanics without utterly breaking everything in between. Plenty of room for two major BR games but it's pretty obvious which one rings more popular with the masses.

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        June 20, 2018 11:24 PM

        Fortnite has reached near viral status the same way Minecraft did. People, ALL types of people, are playing it on whatever device they can. It's all kids talk about, it's what their parents are playing now as well. Nothing to stop it. PUBG will be just a footnote as something that pushed Epic in the direction they took to achieve this.

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      June 20, 2018 6:50 PM

      I've gone from hating these games to being hopelessly addicted to Fortnite on switch. Paladins is also awesome on switch. Both games saved the platform for me to be honest.

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        June 20, 2018 6:56 PM

        I KNEW all it would take would be a switch port to get the Shack to jump ship and start loving Fortnite!

        I feel so vindicated.

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          June 20, 2018 7:53 PM

          If some people here jumped on board its mainly because the functionality and value proposition of the Switch is so good. Its the only console that does something a PC can't.

          I still can't get over how casual the BR genre is, but I'm also a tryhard masochist when it comes to my online games

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            June 20, 2018 11:40 PM

            What's your definition of "casual"? People are pumping serious hours into this game to rival anything that's come before.

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              June 21, 2018 2:21 AM

              People pump lots of hours into Candy Crush as well, that has nothing to do with whether its casual or not.

              I'm not hating btw, I like lots of casual games, its just not my thing when it comes to shooters though

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        June 21, 2018 3:58 AM

        Whoa, paladins? I've never heard of this!

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      June 21, 2018 12:12 AM

      When is the Android release?

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      June 21, 2018 2:01 AM

      That... is unreal

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      June 21, 2018 2:04 AM

      But what about PUBG’s intrepid Xbox One launch

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      June 21, 2018 2:28 AM

      Epic obviously has mastered continuous deployment. I’m pretty sure they have vastly better internal development processes than pubg

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