Nintendo Reveals That Fortnite Was The Most-Played Switch Game Of 2018 In Europe

I don’t find this surprising since it’s free and ridiculously popular right now.

I certainly play it a lot. It's a lot of fun to play.

you can't do that, what else are they gonna say now with your first?

@ryancraddock It’s also incredibly addictive which keeps people playing ( ahem not that I would know).

A free game that everyone and their mums talk about? I can't see how that is more popular than a £50 first-party title.

@ryancraddock sadly I’ve gotten almost 400 in... I just started to play to see what my nephews were going on about. I’ve had to consciously take a break so I can take care of my backlog 😬

I'd love to love Fortnite, I just suck at it.

Other than that, the list looks pretty good. Smash did well to make the list considering it was only out for a few weeks in 2018!

Also, glad Skyrim made the list. Not sure if you will know it? Nice little indie title.

Terrible news

After summer, I kind of just fell out of it. When you get back on after a while, you really see the cracks in the surface. I don't completely regret spending all that time on it, but I probobly should have played more different games. Then again, this was kinda expected given the current circumstances.

Was trying to play last night, but the game is screwed up for the switch (maybe other systems too), bright flashes appearing. When people jump out of the bus, it was one big light show..... Couldn't play it.

Hopefully they fix it, and might try again tonight.

Edit: It is working properly now.

Sad news for fans of solo games. More and more effort will be put into games like this and less and less into solo campaign games

I installed it, never played it then uninstalled it. Plenty of other good games I'd rather play.

Kind of impressed by the sheer number of 2017 titles still lingering in this list, though I suppose it makes sense given that Nintendo's business model relies heavily on those sorts of "evergreen" titles that never truly fall out of popularity.

@Stocksy The next two games on the list are single-player only titles, and overall, about half of the games on the list have a heavy single-player focus, with a good number of those being SP-only titles like Skyrim, Xenoblade and Octopath. There's nothing to worry about. Single player games aren't going anywhere.

@BenAV

To be fair 2018’s biggest hits were released in the last three months of the year.

From my point of view, the crossplay is its biggest attraction point. Especialy since Sony now allowes crossplay for Fortnite aswell. This is bassicly the only reason I played this game, because I could play it with my friend who owns Xbone and other one who owns PS4.

It’s free 😉 it’s been the most talked about and reported on game since well I can’t remember but it’s made it’s way into the mainstream even parents and grandparents know what fortnite is some even call it fork knife

Glad to see Octopath on this list, this and Dark Souls Remastered were my top two time sinks for 2018 by a long way although I also played more shorter indie titles than ever before.

No surprise, whould love to see it otherwise

Yes it's free-to-play but Nintendo consoles used to be first-party games consoles until now.

I have been playing Fortnite quite much on Xbox One X where it looks great and it's fun but it can be quite frustrating when playing against people that haven been playing it 24/7 since launch. They know the game better than they know anything else.

You lot should be ashamed of yourselves

Single player games forever 😛

Will never download or play this game, it's nice it's free, but its just not for me

Not surprised since it was FREE and Fornite was already being played and being a portable Switch just gave more to play it. When my nephew found I downloaded it he played the wazoos out of it. And still does every so often so it hasn't gone out of fashion yet.

Wow, look at that list - 3rd party support 🙃

So basically just about everything nominated at 2019 DICE you needed something else to play it on in 2018 🙄

https://gamedaily.biz/article/499/god-of-war-spider-man-see-the-most-nominations-for-2019-dice-awards

Rhetorical question: Lacking crossplay, being free to download, and play online, would this really be high on the list?

Video games are for fun, and relaxing. Not everyone enjoys the same genres. I have to say, however, that it seems to me that people don't want to go to the extra effort to figure out the basics of how to play a slightly more complex game, such as TLoZ:BotW. It's kind of disappointing. I hope it doesn't make Nintendo even slightly consider shifting focus to games of a watered down nature.

I don't care at all with Fortnite. 🙄
My games collection are still more interesting than Fortnite.

I wonder why they only decided to publish the Top 21? ..seems quite a random number!

I'm guessing that it was either originally planned to be a Top 20 list - but, since #21 was a first-party title (Mario Tennis Aces) they decided to extend the list to include that too - or #22 on the list is a game that's just too embarrassing to mention, so they felt it best just to stop at 21! (..Senran Kagura Reflexions, perhaps? 😂)

Fortnite has helped the switch.

@subpopz: I do agree that it helps the perception of the Switch, and possibly sales.

A little bit of vomit just appeared in my mouth.

Nice, Xenoblade 2 is #10. Good to know it's doing so well for a niche JRPG.

Kind of surprised to see Dragon Ball Xenoverse on there, since I haven't seen a lot of discussion around that game

"As you've almost certainly already realised from the article's title,..."

I feel like this is a jab at the clickbait brigade, but I could be reading too much into this line. XD

Each to their own. Surprised botw being up there considering it was a year old. Deserves it though as I put considerable amount of hours into it in 18'

"Those damn kids of today and their Fortnites."

I played 3 rounds of it, then deleted it. I found it boring, But it's no surprise it's so successful. Free + crafting + shooting, in an accessible to all ages package.

Lovely to see Xenoblade Chronicles in there!

No surprise about Fortnite being the most played game. It's free and it's quick to grab. There's a lot of variety in that list, awesome!

Saw that list last week. Love to see Paladins on here, even if it barely made the list. It's an underrated little game.

@CuteDaltyn the news article on Switch even said top 20. This just seems desperate to me.

@1UP_MARIO which platform did Fortnite not help? It's probably the top played game on any console.

@NaviAndMii on Switch the article says top 20. They felt the need to squeeze it in there for some weird and kinda sad reason.

Doesn't surprise me. The free aspect lends itself to more folks trying it out. (I'm guessing less folks would spend $60 on a shooter just to 'see what all the fuss is about') But I've been playing it off and on since launch, and only once bought a $10 battle pass, getting the rest for free by earning enough in-game currency through lazily playing.
It's definitely true that not every game satisfies every type of gamer, but it should be clear to reasonable folks that the game has enough to offer to keep folks engaged. Just because you may not like it doesn't mean that it's trash, or that folks enjoying it are lazy or simple. I've got maybe 80 hours in Fortnite, but 75 in Smash and over 100 in BotW and 45 in Ark.

TL:DR; It's okay if (many) people enjoy something different. If we didn't offer different games for folks, we'd all just be playing Pong Super Hyper HD Edition

My most played isn't even on the list ... Hollow Knight. Easily over 100hrs on that... Needs more love.

Then probably Odyssey and Zelda, which I'm not even halfway through...

Played 1 game of fortnite, and that was it for my house. Kids do not have Nintendo accounts, can't set it up for them.

It's a shame FIFA 19 is so mediocre, if it was on par with the regular versions or PES then I'll understand

@JackEatsSparrows preach!

Fortnite's the biggest third party game around at the moment and has a reach on almost every platform available. Cross-play with all platforms also helps as well so it's unsurprising to see it there on the list.

A shame that the Switch version is abysmal in terms of performance. It's the one thing letting the game down to me. I would be fine with a locked 30fps but the drops with framepacing issues make it very difficult to enjoy though other peoples mileage may vary.

@In_Ex_Fan it didn’t help the 3ds😉

@1UP_MARIO touché.

@electrolite77 and it doesn’t deserve the hate it gets. I’ve not played it much but my nephews and a lot of people on my friend list play it. It must be doing something right. Right

Really impressed that Pokemon is 8th and 9th on the list considering it came out mid November. Shows it either really smashed sales numbers or there are super dedicated fans out there - or both.

I spent 20 hours to complete the main campaign for nostalgia but too many other things to spend more time on it at the moment.

@CuteDaltyn yeah lol when I saw that today on my Switch (am from Europe), I had to smile there like: wtf they wanna show us how succesful the Mario Ace Tennis was people! Look at it it sits at a solid 21th! XD

@ryancraddock Well it IS free, which tends to make a big impact on how many people you have playing a game.

@RupeeClock The problem with Paladins is how it isn't a social media phenomenon, while Fortnite is. Fortnite is just crazy popular right now due to a combination of it being free and hugely popular with a very young age group as a social media phenomenon. The three really work to it's advantage.

@CuteDaltyn @MisterDevil I bet that the 22th game is third-party and that's why they stopped at 21th.

@JayJ The statistics say that the biggest group of Fortnite players is between 25 and 34 years old. I took a screenshot when I read that. Second group is 18-24, third 13-17 and fourth 35-54.

This honestly makes me sad. But to each their own...

@ryancraddock It's not trash, but the fact that it is free is one of the biggest reasons for it's snowballing success.

@BlueOcean Interesting, I know for the longest time it was regarded as mostly a kids activity, with a bunch of kids talking about how it is basically a form of social media for them. I am guessing the age group got older due to all the mass media coverage it has been receiving, so everyone and their mother is checking it out because it is free.

@JayJ I updated my comment with more information. To be honest I also thought that most players were 13 years old because they always use the microphone, say their age (12-13) and always ask you your age! They also tell you when you play bad even if they play worse. Probably they play more time than adults, too.

The same article says that they have replaced the phone with Xbox/PS voice chat even for doing homework. So yeah they send you an Xbox party invitation to tell you anything.

I think that the main reason why Fortnite Battle Royale is played so much on all platforms is the desire to become as good or better than your human opponents, it's a never-ending loop. People play more and you need to play more too. Also, although the shooting mechanics can be seen as simple, the game is not simple at all because it combines real-time building AND real-time editing with positioning and shooting, to master all that is extremely complicated. You have four options: become obsessed, give it up entirely, play moderately (and accept defeat) or play casually just for fun.

I confess I was obsessed for a few months but not anymore.

@BlueOcean Those are some good comments, and I gotta agree with you here. I also read an article where someone was talking about how it is essentially the modern day hangout for kids these days. I imagine the free access and good multiplayer chat capabilities as well as the way it is naturally sorted by groups made it hugely popular with the younger demographics.

As for the adult players, I imagine you are right about the desire to compete against each other. To be honest I didn't really fall into that probably because I played so much online multiplayer when I was younger and now I just like to play games at my own pace, but it is definitely the kind of game that would suck in a competitive gamer. I mean look at how you got all these people spending a lot of money on it, that definitely isn't kids so it proves how this has become an esport of it's own which is usually a big 20 - 40 age group.

@JayJ Exactly, competitive players get glued to the game mechanics and the battle pass encourages you to play frequently, too. The item shop changes every 24 hours which is another source of attraction. As you say, teenagers have replaced hanging out with friends with playing online and they admit it. They are subscribed to popular Fortnite YouTubers so they don't miss anything and also watch streaming. It's basically a lifestyle.

@ryancraddock That is fair. I kind of figured that is why you said it. It's no secret that I am not a big fan of the game. But I definitely don't think it is trash. It's an average maybe even a little above average game that gets a huge boost because it is free. Another big reason for its popularity is because of streaming. It can be legitimately fun to watch people stream the game.

@BlueOcean yeah I think so too and they took the first 21 games because of Mario Aces too lol I'm pretty sure about it XD

Fortnite is long past being just a video game, it's a industry-trancending phenomenon. Of course it's the most played title!

I'm glad to see that Splatoon 2 is so high up that list.

Probably wouldn't be the case if they had to pay 60 Dollar/Euro for it...