Fortnite sold 5 million battle passes on the first day of Season 3

Fortnite's overwhelming popularity has led to some recordbreaking sales, but there's still room to be surprised. Analyst Michael Pachter has revealed that, per Epic Games, 5 million Fortnite Battle Passes were sold on the first day of season 3 (February 22).

"You can play Game Pass forever by spending $10 once. It's super smart," Pachter said in an interview with Games Beat. "People are going to see that somebody has that hard-to-get skin, and more people will sign up for the Game Pass. Epic told me 12 weeks ago that the one that started 12 weeks ago, they sold 5 million Game Passes the first day. $50 million in a day? That's a good business model. I think a lot of publishers are going to copy that and move to cosmetics so nobody complains about pay-to-win."

To be clear, that number likely includes a good chunk of sales using V-Bucks earned the previous season. Players who complete all 100 tasks associated with the Battle Pass in a month will earn enough currency to purchase the next month's pass without spending anymore real money.

Even so, that's quite a number for a single day. In February, Fortnite surpassed PUBG in PC and console revenue, making $126 million over the entire month. The opening of Season 3 (when those Battle Passes went on sale) showed a huge spike in Twitch viewership as well, according to Superdata's report for the month. With the game continuing to surpass itself for two months after, the question is less "Will Season 4's Battle Pass surpass Season 3's numbers?" and more "By how much?"