Here’s why Fortnite makes billions of dollars; is it time for Street Fighter and other fighting games to start using a similar approach?

Should the next Street Fighter be free to play?

There’s no doubt that fighting game developers en masse have started changing their approach to better fit the DLC-centric world of video gaming as it’s evolved into what it is today.

As the fighting game realm crosses further into the eSports landscape the drive to grow beyond a niche audience and reach more players becomes increasingly intense. We needn’t look any further than at the approach Capcom took with Street Fighter 5.

It’s evident that developers made it a point to make the latest Street Fighter more newcomer friendly by lowering execution requirements in general gameplay in addition to other tweaks, but seeing as the game has barely cracked $2 million in sales two and a half years into its lifespan indicates general reach probably wasn’t as successful as Capcom had hoped.

We next turn our attention to the world of gaming’s most popular title at the moment, Fortnite, which doesn’t cost a dime to play. Fortnite reportedly had 125 million players as of June 2018 and brought in $318 million in May of this year alone.

Fortnite makes its money via cosmetics purchases alone, that is, aesthetic character customization does not affect anything outside of appearance.

Being that the aforementioned title is of the battle royale genre, comparing a fighting game franchise like Street Fighter to it is surely not an apples to apples situation. That said, can fighting games level up to all new echelons of success if they take a few more pages out of this new book?

As it stands right now Street Fighter 5 feels almost caught up in an odd hybrid of the traditional and the new. Players still have to pay full price for the game as well as any additional content. While gamers do have the option of grinding for in game currency which can be used to purchase new characters, the process of doing so really isn’t that all that appealing.

At this point it feels as though the Street Fighter devs could use a little more direction in the way of garnering positive general attention. It goes without saying that Fortnite is doing things correctly, but to emulate this kind of success one would want to know the details and intricacies of…