Mat said something interesting about Fortnite on PS4:
'So, given current trends, slate, pricing, marketing and the Days of Play promotions that were happening around E3, I was expecting a bit more growth on PS4 than we saw. There are massive challenges with trying to determine the impact of an individual causal factor like Fortnite on the sales curve that covers a territory the size of the US, particularly when looking at monthly data, but I've been doing this for a long time, have built countless models, and can run the math. And, given all those factors when comparing to performance of Xbox One and Switch, I'm seeing the impact of Fortnite being much more meaningful on the sales of Xbox One and Switch than I am on PS4.
Could be lots of reasons for this. PS4 has had a significant number of big releases in recent months that would make Fortnite less meaningful overall by rising the base demand curve. I may not be properly gauging just how strong June was for PS4 last year (since we're looking at growth and all... maybe I'm not properly taking into account base and incremental sales of June a year ago which is throwing off my expectations now). Perhaps the PS4 has been doing so well for so long that even higher growth than we're seeing is a completely unreasonable expectation.
The data certainly isn't perfect (monthly at a total territory level is incredibly difficult to do this kind of work with and carries a massive range of error). But people asked for my take given what I see so I gave it. People can disagree, because the data is certainly nowhere near conclusive.
As for cross-play, well, I don't think cross-play has anything to do with performance at all. I do think the account locking thing is an issue, particularly when it comes to Fortnite, where people want to play with whatever items they've acquired wherever they wish to play. If someone wishes to play Fortnite on Mobile, PC and/or Console, and doesn't really care about any other games, then the account locking issue on PS4 could be a purchase barrier. It's one of the reasons why I think we've seen such big boosts to Xbox One this year, and why Switch did so well in June. But if people disagree my feelings certainly won't be hurt.'
Switch Friend Code: SW - 1286-0025-9138
Essay Pro