What is the most popular game in the world today? Your automatic answer might be to say “Fortnite.” And Fortnite is hugely popular, making headlines every day. So that is an understandable response. But is it the right one? Maybe not. There is evidence that shows that Fortnite popularity may ultimately not measure up to Minecraft popularity.

Fortnite Popularity May Not Ultimately Keep Up With Minecraft Popularity

There are many ways we could potentially measure “popularity” with regards to video games. We can talk about search queries, streams, players online at once, players online each month, total accounts, and so forth. The very concept of popularity is a pretty vague one.

But to get some perspective on Fortnite and Minecraft popularity, have a look at the fascinating Google trends report below:

The dates for this graph span the timeframe that begins in February of 2010 and runs through June of 2019. You can see that Fortnite popularity has been very high for a very long time in terms of “interest.” That interest looks like it peaked around 2013. While it has declined in recent years, it has ticked up just a bit recently.

Meanwhile, you can see that interest in Fortnite surged briefly when it came out. But it never reached Minecraft levels, and recently dropped below them.

And what about monthly active players on both of these games? This data states that Minecraft had 91 million monthly players as of March 2019. The Fortnite figure is only 78.3 million. That one is not as recent; it is current as of September 2018. Is it the peak figure? I don’t know. But if it is, obviously it still lags behind that of Minecraft.

Regardless of what this all means, it does prove Minecraft has had great staying power. Even though it is no longer as big as it once was, it has held strong over the years. Will Fortnite? We’ll just have to wait and find out as time moves forward and new gaming trends rise and fall. Keep up with all of our Fortnite news.