Debuting all the way back in 2017, Fortnite has only continued to grow more popular with age. Towards the end of 2023, Fortnite managed to break several of its own player-count records, with its Fortnite OG Season bringing in almost 45 million players in just one day, and the game managing to reach 100 million players during the month of November. Though those records haven’t been officially broken since, Fortnite‘s popularity hasn’t died down, with the latest statistics suggesting that almost 1.5 million players still log in every single day.
When compared directly to its competition, Fortnite still stands head and shoulders above the rest, maintaining a much higher active player-count than both Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone. Fortnite certainly isn’t the flash-in-the-pan that many thought it would be years ago, and it still doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere anytime soon. And with all this continued success, it’s only natural that so many publishers and developers are still trying to replicate Fortnite‘s formula, and if anyone was going to do it successfully, it would be Nintendo, with Mario being its secret weapon.
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Nintendo Could Have its Own Fortnite-Like Hub With Mario
Fortnite Has Become Its Own Gaming Platform
While its constant updates and its frequent pop-culture collaborations have kept fans coming back to Fortnite week after week over these last seven years, it’s Fortnite‘s latest major additions that have really pushed the game back into the forefront of the industry. Coming right at the end of last year, Fortnite‘s Chapter 5 Season 1 update turned the game into a fully-fledged gaming platform, with three entirely new, larger-scale game modes being added to the game.
These three new modes consisted of the Harmonix-developed, Rock Band-like Fortnite Festival, the Rocket League-adjacent kart racer Rocket Racing, and by far the most popular of the lot, the open-world survival crafting game LEGO Fortnite. Essentially full games in their own right, these three large-scale modes are all accessed through Fortnite‘s in-game menus, and require no additional installation, making Fortnite its own platform.
While these three modes are still being added to with each new Fortnite season, it still feels like this is only scratching the surface of what this new era of Fortnite could be. There are countless genres just waiting to be used for the next Fortnite game mode, from a fighting game, to a sports game, to anything in between.
Nintendo Could Have Its Own Mario-Focused Gaming Platform
Though it seems content doing its own thing, Nintendo could easily have its own Fortnite-like gaming platform, and Mario is the key. Over the last few decades, the Mario brothers really gotten around, starring in countless games spanning a vast range of genres, from sports titles, to platform-fighters, to RPGs, to turn-based strategies, and a whole lot more. So, with that precedent already being set, it would be easy for Nintendo to create its own hub for Super Mario.
Nintendo could begin by focusing the platform around Mario Maker, letting players create their own 2D Mario levels once again, and this time, also letting them create their own 3D Mario worlds. With that as the basis, Nintendo could then start to add in more systems and assets based on other popular Mario series, such as Mario Kart, Mario’s various sports outings, Dr. Mario, and maybe eventually even Paper Mario. Even if Nintendo didn’t want to allow players to use these assets to create their own smaller-scale Mario games, it could still add in its own game modes based on these Mario series, potentially charging a smaller amount for each one added to the game.
Fortnite
Fortnite is a massively popular game that has several modes, the most famous of which is the online battle royale mode. In this mode, players collect items, build structures, and battle it out to be the ultimate victor.
- Released
- July 25, 2017
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
- ESRB
- T for Teen – Violence
- Metascore
- 78
- Platforms That Support Crossplay
- Mobile, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
- Split Screen Orientation
- Horizontal Only
- Number of Players
- 1-2
- Local Co-Op Support
- 1-2 Players
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
