‘Fortnite’ Is About To Start Airing Quibi Shows At Risky Reels In Leaked ‘Now Playing’ Mode

Fortnite

Epic/Quibi

In yet another step forward to becoming the Metaverse, dataminers have pulled out information about a new playlist coming to Fortnite which will…simply have people sitting around watching TV shows at Risky Reels.

The playlist is called “Now Playing” and has this description attached to it (via @Yanteh_)

“Just want to Risky & Chill? Hang out in Now Playing to catch the hourly screenings of Punk’d. Top of the hour, every hour.”

So, Punk’d is not the Ashton Kutcher version that most of the Fortnite playerbase will be too young to remember. Rather this is a new version of the same concept, a micro-show hosted by Chance the Rapper and airing on Quibi, the new streaming service that has bite-sized shows in a new entertainment concept that just recently launched at a somewhat perfect time during the pandemic lockdown.

The concept appears to be that this will be a (presumably) combat-free playlist that might be limited to Risky Reels and the immediate area only where you can head down there are watch Quibi episodes of Punk’d every hour.

It’s an experiment, both for Fortnite and Quibi, no doubt.

Fortnite

Epic

Quibi could obviously end up airing more shows at Risky if this pans out, and Fortnite could have screenings of non-Quibi content down the road if there’s any interest in this kind of thing. I think they will probably need to reward players in some way for using this playlist (some amount of XP or something), but it stands to reason that we could see a lot more stuff like this in the future as Fortnite tries to become more and more of a virtual hang out space instead of just a shooting-based video game.

We have already seen something like this before when Fortnite debuted a new clip from Rise of Skywalker presented by director JJ Abrams himself. But this is a more laid back version of the concept where you can just head over to Risky any hour you choose and catch an episode of a show.

Why would you want to watch a TV show or movie in a virtual space like Fortnite instead of on your TV or phone like a normal person? Well, it’s the whole concept of virtual spaces feeling more and more like home as time goes on, and in this case, it could be an activity to do with friends where right now you quite literally can’t have them over to watch anything. But even post-pandemic, I can see this idea becoming more and more common in the future. And Fortnite is on the cutting edge, as per usual. Expect this to start this week.

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