Fortnite is arguably one of the most influential games of all time. It has managed to escape the bubble of gaming industry and has become a worldwide phenomenon. The sheer penetration that it has managed to achieve in the pop culture of the world cannot be underestimated. From appearing in movies like Avengers: Endgame to being on every celebrity’s Instagram story, Fortnite has managed to achieve what no other game has ever done.
Gaming has never been a mainstream business but thanks to Fortnite, we’re finally heading towards that direction. Things were not always this way though. Fortnite started its journey way back in 2011 at Video Game Awards and it had to face a lot of hurdles. The game was in development for almost a decade before it finally got released.
Even after release, Fortnite was never really the star it is today. It took the rise of Battle Royale with PUBG and Epic Games capitalizing on the trend by introducing a Battle Royale mode to Fortnite to get the game to the top. Before that, Fortnite was just a regular zombie wave defense game. Since Epic Games started developing the game way back in 2010, the graphics aren’t exactly what you’d call revolutionary. Yes, Fortnite has graphics that are good enough for modern day but that is mainly because of the art style of the game. There are very minimal details in the world of Fortnite and it also takes advantage of its cartoon-like art style to make the lack of details still look good. Thanks to this ‘hack’ Fortnite can easily manage to run on lower-end machines and mobile phones perfectly fine. However, things are about to change soon.
Epic Games has to change Fortnite
Epic Games has this philosophy of pushing consistent content updates to Fortnite every single week. While this has resulted in some very rough times for its developers (with some of them working over 100 hour weeks), the success that this formula has brought cannot be ignored. Many others like Apex Legends have set foot in Fortnite’s domain but every single one of them has failed to keep up with the sheer amount of content that Epic Games puts out for Fortnite. The game has been out for 2 years and we have already had 9 Seasons for it with new challenges, game modes and items being added every single week. The map, skins, game modes, lore and pretty much everything has changed a lot since the start of Season 1.
Epic has started to see a slump though. According to a recent report, the revenue for Fortnite is down by 38%. This is partly due to the reason that the game has just started to feel a bit too repetitive. Yes, new challenges and content is fun but the basic game is still the same. There is a limit to how much a person is willing to spend on a single game. Fortnite has been out for 2 years and that’s a very long time for a game to stay on top. So, in order to keep the revenue and popularity up, Epic is trying to change some things in Fortnite. Season 10 is almost upon us and Epic has announced that it is deciding to bring a major graphical overhaul to the game.
Fortnite is getting a graphics update
In an official blog post, Epic Games stated that Fortnite will no longer support Direct X 10 graphics cards. While Direct X 10 was never officially recognized in the system requirements for the game, it was still capable of running on older DX 10 cards. However, there was no official confirmation on why this change is being brought to the game apart from the usual ‘for optimization and a better experience’ statement. We have had reports, however, that the game is set to receive a graphical update that will then inevitably push up the minimum system requirements for the game. This means that if you’re running Fortnite on an older PC, you might need to switch out some parts.
Fortnite Season 9 Week 7 Challenge Guide
Do you need to upgrade?
The percentage of people who would be affected severely after this change is likely to stay low though. According to Polygon, anyone with a card released after NVIDIA Geforce GTS 450 or AMD Radeon HD 5450 would probably be fine. However, fine here means that the player would be able to merely run the game and it does not mean that the experience would be smooth or ideal. For that, you would probably need a much higher end graphics card. Anything higher than an NVIDIA GTX 970 would be fine for casual gaming. However, if you really want to experience the game in its full glory, you can spend some big bucks on an NVIDIA RTX 2060 or something (that would still be an overkill).
If you are, in any case, looking to get a new graphics card soon to upgrade your rig, here’s a guide which would help you with choosing the best graphics card for your needs and according to your budget.
Season 10 is still a month off, though and by that times, we could see some graphics cards getting cheaper. AMD is coming out with Navi graphics and there are also reports of NVIDIA preparing to launch some new RTX cards. Consequently, this could result in some of the older cards selling for cheaper prices. Or, if you’re already gaming on an older laptop and cannot really afford to build a PC from scratch, you could invest in a newer gaming laptop. There are tons of very economical options out there which would be perfectly fine for a game like Fortnite. Here are some great budget laptops that you could get for under $500 right now and play Fortnite.
For more Fortnite news and weekly challenge guides, stay tuned!