Isn't Fortnite just the next evolution of Team Fortress 2? I think it's far more likely something replaces it than Fortnite is the king of free to play online battle games indefinitely.
I'd say Overwatch is a closer analogue to being the next evolution of TF2 than Fortnite is, from a purely gameplay perspective (the two games have very similar game modes from point control/king of the hill to "Cart pushing" along with the class/hero/trait based characters).
I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day. I disagree with that though because I see Fortnite capturing the more of the COD semi-casual crowd rather than the relatively more hardcore crowd TF2 captured.
Of course this is really generalized, but I can't imagine Drake playing TF2 back in its heyday.
I think the commentor meant in regards to both being the largest F2P shooters in their day.
That's fair, and if that's the case, I'd still say Overwatch has a better claim to that title (beyond the initial purchase price, anyway-but Blizzard routinely opens the game up for extended F2P periods).
What's going to be interesting to watch in the purely F2P arena is this newcomer Apex from EA. I tried it out last night and it has a lot of interesting features and motifs that seem to be a collection of all of these games; you've got the dedicated classes from TF2, the "hero" theme from overwatch and the overarching battle royale/last team standing from Fortnite, PUBG and others.
Fortnite definitely getting there, but competitive Overwatch is reaching StarCraft levels of intense (or what competitive StarCraft was in the 2000's), there was a team from Europe I think that won over a million dollars in an Overwatch pro match back in 2017, teams are getting sponsored[1], even ESPN-"the worldwide leader in sports"-is getting into broadcasting Overwatch matches[2].
None of this is to take anything away from what the team over at Epic is doing or to say anything less of Fortnite, for what it's worth. It's definitely a phenomenon in its own right, but there's serious amounts of money being moved around for competitive OW gaming.
