Fortnite Season 9 adds new locations and wind transport, but is mostly just virtual items – TechCrunch

It’s that point once more. Dad and mom the world over are doling out $15 to Epic Games after the developer released Season 9, the newest replace for its hit recreation Fortnite that’s notably common amongst youngsters and younger adults.

Fortnite is estimated to have more than 250 million players, and it has proven to be a major money-spinner for Epic due to gross sales of seasonal Battle Passes, skins and digital gadgets for avatars. That’s very a lot the main target for Season 9, which dropped in the present day and is actually concerning the cosmetics, with the newest Battle Move unlocking greater than 100 rewards, together with a spread of recent skins and characters.

Season 9 is an improve that’ll hold present players locked into Fortnite by means of evolution — there are not any radical modifications to excite new or less-active gamers.

By way of gameplay, Fortnite has added not less than three new places. Neo Tilted replaces Tilted Towers, which was destroyed by a volcano eruption final week, then there’s Mega Mall, which is an improve on Retail Row, and Stress Plant which is the place the volcano was once. Epic has added “Slipstreams,” that are generators that energy a wind-based transport system for getting throughout the map shortly, and doubtlessly including an fascinating new fight angle.

There’s additionally a brand new “Fortbytes,” which is actually a hidden merchandise problem. Players who purchased a Battle Move can accumulate a sequence of 100 collectible laptop chips which can be scattered throughout the map. There are an preliminary 18 launched, with a brand new arrival every day — those that accumulate all of them can unlock rewards and “secrets and techniques.”

There’s only one new gun on provide, the fight shotgun, which doesn’t appear notably spectacular, whereas grenades have returned. A lot of weapons have been eliminated — or “vaulted” in Epic parlance — and so they embody clingers, pump shotgun, poison dart entice, scoped revolver, suppressed assault rifle, thermal assault rifle and balloons.

That’s concerning the sum of the brand new replace, though Fortnite does now embody three new restricted time video games: three-person squad “trios,” a “stable gold” mode that makes use of legendary weapons and “one shot,” a sniper-only battle set in a low-gravity setting.

Notice: The unique model of this text has been up to date to appropriate that Stress Plant is one other new location added in Season 9