In its latest integration, Epic Games showed a clip of the upcoming "Star Wars" movie through the virtual drive-in theater in Fortnite, per The Verge. The event itself was hosted by Geoff Keighley — who hosts The Game Awards — comedian Ben Schwartz, and Star Wars director J.J. Abrams, in avatar form. The event drew a lot of attention — it had to be delayed by 15 minutes because Fortnite's servers had difficulty handling the amount of traffic it generated.
Business Insider IntelligenceThis comes as Fortnite creator Epic Games has been investing in building out social features within the Fortnite universe. Fortnite has an audience of 250 million global users, but those gamers are often known to enter the game to hang out with friends and not necessarily to play the game.
The game publisher has been acting to capitalize accordingly: For instance, Epic decided to develop out its "Creative" mode once it hit 100 million players because, as put by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, it saw "that as Fortnite evolves, it's evolving beyond being a game," and into a virtual, social universe unto itself. Additionally, the company purchased the video-chat app Houseparty in June, which it could eventually use to facilitate communication between players.
The app has been installed 35 million times across Android and iOS, and boasts a high popularity rate among younger users in high school and college. Epic has decided to keep Houseparty separate from Fortnite so far, but it feels like a safe bet that Epic plans to use the app to make socializing easier for Fortnite users.
The integration of streaming video into Fortnite's environment highlights a unique cross-promotional opportunity for both gaming platforms and media companies. Notably, Epic disabled players' weapons upon their arrival, a move that emphasized the community-focus of the event and, largely, of the game itself. After a show featuring Star Wars ships battling it out, the players were given an interactive quiz asking what they thought the clip would show, and then a 30-second sneak-peak of the forthcoming Star Wars movie was shown on an in-game hologram screen.
Fortnite has previously hosted branded content for movies like the Disney-owned "Avengers" as well as "John Wick," but this is the first time it's actually streamed video content from a movie within the game. The closest analog to this event is Fortnite's DJ Marshmello concert that took place in February, which drew over 10 million concurrent viewers into the game to hang out and enjoy music rather than actually game.
For Disney, this is a tremendous get, as Fortnite could help the Mouse House endear itself to an engaged young audience it might otherwise struggle to access. And if the companies were to go a step further and, say, stream an episode of "The Mandalorian" — a Disney+ original based on "Star Wars" IP — that could further Disney's reach while also helping Fortnite further develop its community. Any extension of the Disney-Fortnite partnership would likely make competitors nervous: After all, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has already said in the past that the video streaming giant competes more against Fortnite than any other video streaming service.
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