Fortnite Battle Royale
The idea for "Fortnite Battle Royale" arose following the release of the similar battle royale game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds", which saw numerous player count records broken throughout 2017. Seeing its rapid growth and commercial success, Epic Games saw the opportunity to create a battle royale mode of their own. Originally released as part of the paid "Fortnite" game, Epic spun out a dedicated version of the game offered as free-to-play funded by microtransactions, sharing in-game currency with the main "Fortnite" game, allowing players to buy or earn cosmetic items to customize their character, as well as completing challenges through a battle pass to earn additional rewards. , the game has seen over 200 million players, and has been estimated to have earned in microtransactions. "Fortnite Battle Royale" has become a cultural phenomenon, with streams of the game achieving record-high viewerships, and with several high-profile celebrities stating their appreciation of the game.
Cross-platform play
With the release of "Fortnite Battle Royale" on the Nintendo Switch during E3 2018 in June, Sony's approach to cross-platform play drew further criticism. The game supports cross-platform play across personal computer, Xbox One, and mobile devices, with players normally able to use a single Epic Games account, which may be linked to a platform-specific account, to carry over progress and purchases between any of those platforms; the Nintendo Switch version also works in this same manner. However, players found that if their Epic Games account was tied to a PlayStation Network account, they could not use that profile on the Switch or other versions of the game, requiring them to either create a new Epic account, or unlinking their PlayStation Network account from their Epic account which completely resets the player's progress. The PlayStation 4 version also remained limited in only allowing its players to cross-platform play with personal computer and mobile devices and not the Switch or Xbox One versions. Nintendo affirmed that this was a decision made by Sony, as they otherwise would want to be open to all forms of cross-platform play. Many gamers and even video game journalists accused Sony of forcing the restrictions to prevent PlayStation 4 players from playing on other platforms. Sony stated in response that they are still open to what players wanted, and that "With... more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we've built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles". Journalists took Sony's reaction as a message from Sony that providing cross-platform play on other consoles would be a threat to the market dominance of the PlayStation 4, which, at the time, has the current largest number of users compared to Xbox One or Nintendo Switch. John Smedley, a former president of Sony Online Entertainment (now Daybreak Game Company), stated that during his time with Sony, the reason the executives gave him for rejecting cross-platform play support was simply a financial motive, claiming, "they didn't like someone buying something on an Xbox and it being used on a Playstation". Sony's stocks fell approximately 2% in the days after this event, largely due to outrage from the large "Fortnite" player base.