Warzone’s new map still can’t make Call of Duty overtake Fortnite

Warzone’s new map still can’t make Call of Duty overtake Fortnite
Sledgehammer Games | Epic Games

Written by 

Jack Marsh

Published 

8th Dec 2023 17:05

Warzone's Urzikstan map is supposed to reignite the Call of Duty battle royale back into the golden ages.

Taking inspiration from Verdansk, housing a smaller area of combat but encouraging gunfights, and enhancing movement, the new map has all the makings of what made Warzone so great in the first place.

Yet just hours after the map had launched, the influx of players was still not enough to put Warzone back on top.

Warzone loses out to Fortnite in viewership amid Urzikstan map launch

Click to enlarge

Back in its peak, Warzone would consistently outperform its rivals on Twitch, with Fortnite, PUBG, and Apex Legends all perishing to the mighty Verdansk.

But following the integration of Warzone Urzikstan and the Modern Warfare 3 features, CoD has not been able to overtake Fortnite again, after its recent success with the OG map still reverberating and the new LEGO update attracting more players.

According to a screenshot from Journalist Jake Lucky, Fortnite managed to have more viewers on Twitch than Warzone did, despite this snippet coming just after Urzikstan landed.

One excuse for this could simply be, well, everyone is playing the game, not watching it, and given the console player count not being available, you'd never be able to disprove that theory.

LEGO Fortnite obliterates Call of Duty

The new LEGO update to Fortnite was just one of three new spin-offs to Epic Games' animated battle royale, with Rocket Racing (a Rocket-League-inspired mode) and Fortnite Festival both planned for the next coming days.

But LEGO Fortnite alone saw Epic Games' player count peak at 2.4 million users yesterday, showing just how popular the game mode is. Fortnite also recently broke its all-time-peak stats by smashing the 5 million mark after the re-launch of the OG map.

Maybe Warzone's only shot at dominating the battle royale genre really is to redeploy Verdansk again, although the developers have been pretty insistent that this is not happening any time soon.

Jack Marsh
About the author
Jack Marsh
Jack is an Esports Journalist at GGRecon. Graduating from the University of Chester, with a BA Honours degree in Journalism, Jack is an avid esports enthusiast and specialises in Rocket League, Call of Duty, VALORANT, and trending gaming news.
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