With Fortnite continuing to dominate the gaming world and making Epic Games billions of dollars , another publisher is now thinking about jumping into battle royale market, which could be worth $20 billion in 2019

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During its investor call for Q1 FY2019, Electronic Arts talked about the possibility of making a free-to-play battle royale game of its own. The topic came about when Electronic Arts COO and CFO Blake Jorgensen was asked if Battlefield 5's battle royale mode (dubbed Battlefield Royale) might be spun off into a separate free-to-play product. Jorgensen shot down that idea, saying Battlefield Royale was "no different" than any other mode in Battlefield 5. Continuing, however, he implied that a separate, standalone battle shooter from Electronic Arts is a possibility."I would say we're interested in possibly experimenting with an essentially free-to-play standalone game that might be in a shooter genre or another genre, but I don't think that's how we're looking at the Battlefield stuff right now," said Jorgensen. "But you'll see more to come on that in the coming months and years."As for Battlefield 5, Electronic Arts wants to give players as many different options for playing the game as it can, whether that be single-player, traditional shooter multiplayer, or battle royale modes. CEO Andrew Wilson called developer DICE one of the publisher's most innovative studios and said it's working on other new modes as well."We're continuing to build and look to deliver innovative multiplayer components to [Battlefield 5]," said Wilson. "And as we come into October, we'll be talking more about this, but you should expect that we'll be delivering a full-featured game that features all of the traditional components of a Battlefield game in addition to new modalities of play including battle royale and delivered in a way that we believe we want to play, which is not just what you get at launch but in the context of a live service over time."Battlefield's biggest rival, Call of Duty, is also getting a battle royale mode in this year's iteration, and it's arguably the right mode for both games to copy Battlefield 5 will release on October 19 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Nick Santangelo is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He loves video games and sports, but not sports video games. Follow him on Twitter