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I have been thinking about Blackout Royal Battleout Mode. It is Treyarch and Activision's answer to the competitive threat in the multibillion-dollar shooter market from Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. And I now think it's going to be huge.
I played it during the beta, and it changed my mind about the potential of Black Ops 4. I was totally skeptical. I was bemoaning the fact that for the first time history, Call of Duty would not have a single-player campaign. I have played every Call of Duty game, and the campaign always delivered to compelling story.
The six to 10 hour campaigns motivated me to play about 100 hours of multiplayer after launch. Zombie co-op play, and, of course, the explosion of royal battle (where 100 players are whittled down to one survivor, Hunger Games style) in the spring of 2017.
Treyarch jettisoned it. Blackout, which is a battle with a huge map that is 1.500 times larger than Nuketown, a small multiplayer map. It copies the gameplay of PUBG, which was also copied by Fortnite. I played it, and I was shocked at how fun and affordable Blackout was.
Coming during the middle of a three-year development cycle, this change could have been disastrous for Treyarch. Last fall's Call of Duty: WWII did not stop there, but it was probably lost in the second half of last year and continued success of PUBG. Treyarch spun on dime and changed gears, cutting single player and going to work on Blackout.
Bluehole, a small South Korean studio that has been teamed up with developer Brendan Greene, did the impossible in both of these lines. Electronic Arts' DICE studio could not react quickly. DICE announced a battle royale mode for Battlefield, but it did not show any gameplay, and this mode is not expected to launch, when the downloadable content (DLC) launches.
But Treyarch correctly surmised the threat. It also tripled down on Zombies, providing three story experiences instead of just one, and made sure Blackout would be ready at the October 12 launch. All of this is happening real-time, and you can see how Treyarch reacted differently from DICE.
After the blackout beta test began on September 10, analyst Mike Hickey said that it could drive an additional $ 500 million in revenue for Call of Duty. The stock price for Pink Blizzard Activision 5 percent in a day. When EA showed the battlefield V beta on – without battle royal – the reaction was not nearly as strong. Called Duty in Mid-October and Red Dead Redemption 2 on October 26.
Above: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's Blackout Mode.
Image Credit: Activision
I played Blackout in the beta and I was impressed at how accessible and fun it was. I could actually hit someone with a weapon in Blackout, and my failures with Fortnite, which makes them more difficult to target. in front of you.
By contrast, with a little bit of craftiness, I could rarely survive in Blackout. It was more like the royal battle that I was waiting for. I was still really bad compared to a lot of players, but I had the feeling that I could actually win. Like with the other battle royal games, it gets really tight as the player circle tightens, the number of survivors drops, and you have to fight it out one-on-one in a final duel.
Treyarch managed to create a fast-action Call of Duty battle royal fashion that was in between the less-accessible PUBG and the free-to-play, zany, and almost casual Fortnite. It could be a brilliant move, so long as Treyarch correctly judged that it could finish the job and stamp out the bugs in time.
EA's Dice will be the most fashionable, but it is certainly not striking while the iron is hot. It's no wonder that Activision Blizzard is worth $ 61.3 trillion and EA is valued at $ 34.7 trillion.
Above: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 's Blackout map uses a lot of familiar spaces.
Image Credit: Treyarch
I think that PUBG has more to lose than Blackout than Fortnite. Fortnite has a different free-to-play business model, where players pay for money.
PUBG, on the other hand, is a serious military shooter that is more like Call of Duty. It could be much more vulnerable.
This is not all my imagination. Last night, Macquarie Research said in a report that the launch of a new generation of content has driven Fortnite viewership to a new high watermark. July's Season 5 averaged 221,400 viewers in its first week. But Season 6 launched last week to only 169,400 average viewers, down 24 percent, signalling that interest in Fortnite on Twitch has peaked.
"Call of Duty would likely be the largest beneficiary of a drop-off in Fortnite's first holiday '18 Triple-A release to include a royal battle mode," said analyst Ben Schacter, in the report. "Activision held a beta test for the royal battle in September and ranked No. 4 for the week, averaging 103,000 viewers and peaking at 586,500. That was 2.9 times and 3.9 times the best weeks of the last year's Call of Duty game, respectively. "
Still, PUBG and Fortnite have the advantage of being earlier to the market. They have extremely popular mobile versions that Treyarch admittedly is missing. They have multiple battle royal maps and esports events that are in motion. Fortnite, with its Fortnite victory dance, has become a cultural phenomenon, with an awareness on a level that could even make the Call of Duty marketers jealous.
And so I did not want to make the mistake of having a fight. This is going to be a hard slog for market share, a battle in the mud, and four games (and perhaps others) duke it out for king of the royal battle. And, of course, Red Dead Redemption 2 may be so good that it sucks time away from all of the royal games.
But I know I'll be playing Blackout.
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