Each week, Fast Travel helps you get caught up on everything going on in the gaming industry. We start by highlighting a few of the week’s biggest news pieces. Then it’s on to a little dollop of indie news. Followed by a helping of “The Best Thing on the Internet, This Week.” And finally, we gather up all the week’s headlines and smash them into a TL;DR pie for you to enjoy. 

 Fortnite: Battle Royale Hits 800,000 Concurrent Players

This week, Fortnite passed the 800k concurrent player mark for the first time. For most games, this would be a massive milestone, but a healthy dose of Twitch coverage and engagement, as well as highly addictive gameplay, has turned battle royales into an unusually popular genre.

Like MOBAs years ago, there are major contenders popping up as the genre’s popularity continues to surge. It took Battle Royale only a month to reach the 800k mark. A feat that took PUBG five months to achieve. 

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Sony Debuts a Slough of Trailers at Paris Games Week

With Microsoft and Nintendo dominating the headlines for the last month or two, Sony must have decided enough was enough. They pulled out all the stops for their Paris Games Week event and showed off one of the best gaming lineups we’ve seen in a long time.

The biggest names were Far Cry 5, Destiny 2, Spider-Man, Guacamelee 2, The Last of Us Part 2 and God of War. And if none of those games excite you, maybe Monster Hunter or Detroit: Become Human will.

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Super Mario Odyssey Is the Fastest-Selling Super Mario Game in U.S. History

Super Mario Odyssey is selling better than any Super Mario game before it. Just last week Nintendo announced that the game had sold a whopping 2 million copies within its first few days on the market, including 1.1 million copies sold in the U.S. alone. Now the game is breaking even more records.

Nintendo revealed in a Twitter post that Odyssey is officially the fastest-selling Super Mario game ever in the U.S.. Based on the sales numbers, on average, just under half of all Switch owners in the U.S. already own Super Mario Odyssey.

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Sony Profits Rise Sharply Thanks to PlayStation

Sony released its second quarter earnings report this week and the electronics company has its PlayStation division to thank for a steep rise in profits and an increase in year-end revenue estimates.

The PlayStation console is the core of Sony’s gaming division, which also includes PSVR and various other gaming related subsidies. In the last quarter, this gaming division saw an increase of 35.4 percent year-on-year in operating revenue, according to the company’s consolidated financial report. That increase helped fuel an overall sales and operating revenue increase of 22.1 percent for Sony. 

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