Fortnite might seem like the biggest game in the world right now, and by most metrics it’s certainly in the top handful of games. But Epic’s co-op shooter turned battle royale isn’t reigning uncontested in every arena. YouTube’s gaming boss says that Minecraft is still on top worldwide, despite Fortnite’s rise.
“Fortnite has certainly been a massive contributor to the growth on gaming,” gaming content director Ryan Wyatt says, but adds that “Minecraft is still our biggest game globally. Fortnite has not taken off in every single market.” Wyatt notes that Fortnite’s success is largely centered on the Western market, but worldwide stats tell a different story.
“When you start to look at these other countries and regions,” Wyatt tells The Verge, “we’re actually seeing explosive growth from the mobile gaming category that’s pretty underrepresented in the West. I think there are a lot of things that are happening outside of the US, outside of Western Europe, that are causing a lot of growth for gaming on YouTube that are kinda understated.”
Wyatt’s not specific about which metrics put the builder on top. It’s worth noting that Fortnite was bigger than Minecraft at least briefly early this year, according to certain metrics. In February, Fortnite hit 2.4 billion YouTube views, passing Minecraft for the month. The next month, Wyatt reported another record himself – Fortnite was the subject of the most videos for a single game in a single month ever.
How big is @FortniteGame on YouTube? Fortnite holds the record for the most videos related to a video game uploaded in a single month EVER. Yesterday, the Battle Royale tournament had over 42M live views, and set a record for biggest single live gaming stream @ 1.1M concurrent.
— Ryan Wyatt (@Fwiz) March 26, 2018
But it’s tough to argue with Minecraft, which has been one of the top games in the world over most of the the past decade. With the current Fortnite player numbers, though, it could quickly catch up – it’s not like the game’s success isn’t already astronomical.