Call Of Duty's 'Blackout' Doesn't Truly Compete With 'Fortnite' For Two Simple Reasons

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4Credit: Activision

Here's a small indication of what publisher Activision thinks about Blackout, the new battle royale mode for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, out today. As with all games, there's a minimum amount you need to download before you can start playing Black Ops 4. And if you boot up the game at that minimum viable moment, you'll notice something on the mode select screen. You won't be able to play zombies and you won't be able to play traditional multiplayer, because Blackout is the first thing the game downloaded. And why wouldn't it be?

Blackout has already made a splash in the battle royale space for the sheer fact of existing. It's the first entry into the genre from a AAA franchise, and it's the first post-Fortnite release that has a broad swath of shooter fans ginned up to play. Which is convenient, because it's good: it takes the rock-solid shooter foundations of the Call of Duty franchise and turns them on their head in a game mode that favors caution and intentional positioning over the constant chaos that marks team deathmatch.

As Paul Tassi notes, Blackout is a massive problem for the already-struggling PUBG, which is now looking a whole lot like a budget version of Blackout. The two games pursue a similar aesthetic and gameplay, but so far Call of Duty looks to be doing so better, with fewer technical glitches, and with the developer power of Treyarch and partner studios for post-launch support. But PUBG was already on the decline. The real question is: what does this mean for Fortnite?

The two couldn't look more different while still being in the same genres. Fortnite is bright and cartoony, Call of Duty is photorealistic and inevitably somewhat grim. Fortnite revolves around hypermobility, absurd stunts and its signature building system, while Call of Duty leans on a tactical shooter concept bolstered by more elaborate vehicles. But even so, these are both battle royale games, and so they're bound to interact.

I still can't help but feel that Blackout just doesn't really compete with Fortnite for two very simple reasons. It's not free, and it's not on phones.

It can be easy to miss this crucial difference if you're playing both of these games next to each other and evaluating them simply on their design merits. But a huge part of Fortnite's explosion has been its hyper-accessibility, and arguably a huge part of its early lead over PUBG was the fact that Epic launched it for free. That's why we see a huge audience playing this in middle schools and even younger, and that's how Fortnite was able to put up such colossal numbers in a relatively short period of time. If you want to play Blackout you need to spend $60, and that's if you already have a capable PC, Xbox One or PS4. If you want to play Fortnite all you need is the phone that might already be in your pocket.

And that's going to dictate how Fortnite interacts not just with Blackout, but with other big games like Battlefield 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Its presence on mobile and lower-end PCs just means that it has access to massive audience that Call of Duty doesn't, and that means that these two games can comfortably coexist without dramatic competition despite being in the same genre.

Me? I'll be moving on to Blackout at least for a while, because I'm terrible at building and I'm not a huge fan of aiming bloom.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2018/10/12/call-of-dutys-blackout-doesnt-really-compete-with-fortnite-for-two-simple-reasons/

Bagikan Berita Ini