Epic’s Fortnite Awaits With Bated Breath for Nintendo Characters
Epic’s Fortnite platform has welcomed crossover characters from Sony and Microsoft already through Kratos, Aloy, and Master Chief, but no Nintendo characters have appeared in the game as of yet. That’s not for a lack of trying, though. Epic ecosystem boss Saxs Persson told Axios that Fortnite players “would love it” if Nintendo characters came to Fortnite. A former Nintendo employee, however, believes this will never happen and that the idea “makes no sense.”
Persson said, “Nintendo has their strategy and we have our strategy…” Persson said there is a “hope” that “at some point” Nintendo might agree to a deal. Discussing how much effort Epic has put into trying to convince Nintendo to allow it, Persson said, “I don’t know what the word for, like, making diamonds is.”
Nintendo characters have crossed over to other games before, as Mario appears in Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids series and Sega’s Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games franchise. Then there was the time Link appeared as a playable character in Soulcalibur II from Namco.
Kit Ellis, a former Nintendo employee who has since left the company, said in a video that there is “no reason” for Nintendo to bring any of its characters to Fortnite. “[Nintendo] has spent decades building up these characters, building up this IP to the point where it is now where The Mario Movie can be a billion dollars and Nintendo Switch is the best-selling console,” Ellis said. “They don’t need Fortnite. They’re bigger than Fortnite. The stuff that they do is bigger than Fortnite.”
Ellis went on to say that “it makes no sense” for Nintendo to lend any of its characters to Fortnite for plenty of reasons, including his belief that Fortnite is a game about shooting people, which goes against Nintendo’s values. For what it’s worth, Fortnite is much bigger than battle royale alone, as it now features numerous other ways to play and is beginning to seem more akin to a platform than any one particular game. But no one should expect to play as Mario in Fortnite, Ellis said.
“It doesn’t really matter how hard Epic tries; this isn’t going to happen,” Ellis said.
Long ago, there were rumors of Samus from the Metroid series coming to Fortnite, but that never materialized.
Fortnite just wrapped up one of its biggest weeks ever with the launches of Chapter 5, Season 1 that marked a “new beginning” for the game, as well as Lego Fortnite and Fortnite Festival. Together, more than 6.6 million people were logged into Fortnite across is various modes.
For more on Fortnite’s big moves, check out GameSpot’s opinion piece that explains why these recent updates make the game feel like Fortnite 2, even if Epic won’t call it that.