With the passage of time, it is easy to lose perspective. We tend to minimize problems that were crucial in our lives, to give crucial importance to trivial events or even to think in an egocentric way that, when we give up something, the world has done it too. And that last thing happens to us with everything, with beliefs, fashion trends, television programs and even video games. However, who remembers 'Minecraft'?
The videos on giant calculators were left behind, the Youtubers jumped to other things, there is no room to get excited again with the scale recreation of a game of Thrones ... Now everything is 'Fortnite', the new obsession of big and small that is occupying the covers, channels, and conversations that one day was 'Minecraft'.
Minecraft is not dead
To the success of 'Fortnite', like that of 'Minecraft' a few years ago, the internet is too small. In the park you see the children playing with imaginary shotguns, the soccer players imitate their dances as a celebration and the designs of their characters are already reflected in the t-shirts of the markets, probably the turning point of any children's fashion.
The feat had been shaped, with the meteoric success of 'Fortnite' and how the circle that is narrowing in their games was about to leave out 'PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds', the game that without a doubt owes everything it has achieved to date.
Today it is time to land the present and future by comparing the numbers with those achieved by that other great triumph that turned out to be 'Minecraft'. Although, it is time to stop talking in the past and recognize that we have lost perspective. That we have no idea what is the situation of the Mojang block game and, fortunately for those who decided at Microsoft that it was a good idea to spend a pasture in the game, their numbers are still delivering records after eight years in the game.
It is only necessary to move to January of this same year, with Helen Chiang taking advantage of her promotion as the head of Mojang to celebrate that, in December of 2017, 'Minecraft' recorded its highest record to date. To the 144 million copies that had been sold the game had to add his biggest peak of monthly users, a total of 74 million active users.
Minecraft, Fortnite and the record figures
The best way to put ourselves in the situation before figures like this is to take a look at what other services mark. The 74 million monthly users of 'Minecraft' are far from the 2 billion Facebook, the 1.5 billion WhatsApp or even the 813 million Instagram. Not so much of the 330 of Twitter or the 160 of Spotify.
In terms of video games, the current king is 'Arena of Valor', better known as 'Honor of Kings' in China, where the game has turned out to be quite a revolution, reaching 160 million active monthly users. Behind that, 'League of Legends', with a peak of just over 100 million last September. And others that come to mind, from 'GTA V' to 'Clash Royale', are behind those two.
The merit of 'Minecraft' despite having almost 10 years behind, is in the fact that it has always been a payment game. Today is on various platforms at 30 euros, although it is not the equivalent of mooring in a port, it is an abyss for those kids who see a much more accessible alternative in free-to-play games.
And right there we entered the last free-to-play par excellence. If in eight years 'Minecraft' has managed to reach its 74 million assets in a month and 'League of Legends' is close to 100 after nine years in the market, in what situation is 'Fortnite Battle Royale' when they still have more four months to complete its first year? More than 40 million.
Fortnite wants to surpass all figures
The past month of February from Epic Games they announced that they had surpassed to 'PUBG' in the greater number of simultaneous players. By then it had not yet reached mobile phones, which will surely have increased those figures considerably, but already showed a peak of a few niggardly 3.4 million players.
Almost three and a half million heads with an eye on the game at the same time, a little more than the record that until then had 'PUBG' with 3.2 million. But more surprising is that, of the 45 million users that 'Fortnite' has through different platforms, 40 million of them make the game a hole in their lives per month.
However, the success is far from reaching its end and, beyond the short life of the game, his ascent still has much to prove. Where it is already doing is in the number of views on YouTube, once the realm of 'Minecraft'. The best moment of Microsoft's game on the platform was back in 2014 when its videos reached a total of almost 31 billion views, much more interest than aroused by the 12 billion views of 'Grand Theft Auto' or the 10 billion of 'Call of Duty'.
As shown in the graph above, it has had to be the new combatant, without taking away record or prestige figures. After the release of 'Fortnite Battle Royale', the rest of games begin to stop being important, even without blowing its first candles and in beta phase, it has a long way ahead to continue growing.