The battle royale game format has become pretty popular in the past few months. The format was initially popularized by PlayerUnknown"s Battlegrounds, and the wild popularity led to Epic Games announcing a similar multiplayer mode for Fortnite. The studio behind LawBreakers has put an 80s twist on the genre, and even Nintendo"s Switch is getting a taste of the 100-player battle mode.
With such a quick rise to fame, it shouldn"t be entirely surprising that Turtle Beach, a company focused on making gaming headphones, has seen the value of its shares skyrocket to 712% this year thanks to the sheer popularity of the battle royale genre. In the past five days alone, the company"s shares more than doubled, though they saw an 8% drop today.
Turtle Beach CEO Juergen Stark elaborated on the Q1 2018 results during an earnings call, saying that the "headsets make these games more immersive and provide an advantage in hearing audio cues". He also believes that the battle royale format will not disappear as quickly as it grew:
We expect the Battle Royale format to have lasting appeal and not be a short-lived phenomena due to the style of the games and the addition of new participants into gaming. As the base on gaming headsets users goes up, we expect replacements and upgrades will too. We also expect more publishers, who will develop games with the Battle Royale format this year.
Turtle Beach isn"t the only company reaping the benefits of games such as Fortnite. Astro Gaming, a company acquired by Logitech last year, has seen sales of its headsets grow by numbers in the double digits, according to Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell.
It"s hard to predict if the battle royale genre will remain popular over time, but with the growing number of developers creating their own variation of it, companies such as Turtle Beach may very well continue to see strong results over the coming months.
Source: Turtle Beach, Turtle Beach Q1 2018 Earnings Call via CNN