Week in Review - The expanding ambitions of Fortnite

Saturday, April 25, 2020 • By Lucas Matney

Hey everybody, welcome back to Week in Review.

Last week, I wrote about Facebook’s hardware strategy suddenly finding success in a quarantined world.

If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here.

The big story

Travis Scott “put on a concert” in Fortnite this week and 12.3 million people were there to watch. Who knows whether the event would have been just as popular in less quarantined circumstances, but between the increased number of active gamers and the complete shutdown of concerts and music festivals, the conditions were ripe for something big.

I don’t love Travis Scott and I don’t play Fortnite but I know a gaming trend when I see one and this was a big moment for Epic Games.

When Scott had his “performance”, Fortnite was not a game as much as it was an entertainment platform where people could go and wild things could happen. It worked because the game has long abided by the idea of calendar-based global events bringing users together, but it was a reach and showcased how far Epic Games could eventually take the game if they wanted to.

Over the past couple decades of networked gaming, there have only been a few multiplayer titles to scratch at the idea that one day a gaming platform could get so big that people would never want to leave. They’re not staying because the gameplay is so great, they’re staying because the network is. The social environment is the product and the gameplay is just a destination within that world.

So, sure, Battle Royale is life, but life can have other things interrupting it. For Epic Games, this concert was one of their further outreaches in discovering the limits of user behavior.

How to engage your customers in a crisis

Trends of the Week

Facebook invests $5.7 billion in Indian telecom
Sometimes there’s massive news and it feels like no one is paying attention. This week, Facebook bought a 10% stake in Indian telecom Reliance Jio Platforms. The $5.7 billion deal was their biggest since acquiring WhatsApp and the goal was largely the same, tapping the Indian market and its proliferating base of smartphone users. Read more here.

Magic Leap reportedly lays off 1,000 employees
Magic Leap has always been a hard sell. The consumer augmented reality has argued it could beat Apple to the punch but its promises have seemed to exceed what they’ve been able to deliver on. This week, life got rough as the company was forced to make big layoffs. Read more here.

Apple releases ‘Magic Keyboard’
Yes, it’s just a keyboard case with trackpad, but for all the hesitation Apple has shown for treating the iPad like a real device for power users, the release of the new Magic Keyboard feels substantial. Read more about the new hardware here.

Image Credits: Himanshu Bhatt / NurPhoto / Getty Images

COVID-19 research progress

A collection of stories from this week highlighting where the fight against COVID-19 is.

Image Credits: Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis / Getty Images

Extra Crunch

Investors and entrepreneurs are shifting their chats to Zoom, so we're taking note and hosting live Q&A discussions for our Extra Crunch subscribers with some of tech's most visible figures. We'll be hosting these Extra Crunch live chats over the next several weeks.

Announcing the Extra Crunch Live event series

This upcoming week, we'll be talking with Mark Cuban
Thursday, April 30 at 8:00am PT / 11:00am ET

Join Mark Cuban and TechCrunch to talk about startups in the age of COVID-19 and learn how Mark is advising his investments to weather the storm. As a longtime investor in and out of the Valley, Cuban is uniquely placed to provide valuable advice for founders and investors alike.