Epic Games’s popular last-player-standing game Fortnite: Battle Royale is heading to mobile. It’s coming to iOS devices first, with Android support coming later this year. Players will be able to register starting on March 12.
The publisher says that a limited number of invites will be sent out to start, but it will also hand out friend invite codes and then gradually open it up to more players. The mobile version of Fortnite will require iOS 11. Compatible phones include the iPhone 6S/SE and beyond. It will also be compatible with the iPad 2017, Mini 4, Pro, and Air 2.
Fortnite supports cross-play between most devices, which means players can play with each other even if they’re using different platforms (such as someone on PlayStation 4 facing off against PC players). This is available on PC and PlayStation 4 as well as iOS and Android when it launches there. Though the game is on Xbox One, that console doesn’t support cross-play.
PUBG Corp.’s rival battle royale game, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, announced last year that it had partnered with Tencent to launch a mobile version in China. A plethora of clones already exist on the mobile marketplace, but it’s likely that both PUBG and Fortnite will have no trouble taking on the imitators.
Fortnite has over 40 million players, and PUBG sold over 20 million before even leaving Early Access on PC and another 4 million when it launched on Xbox One in December. In January, the two together generated $ 200 million in revenue and have staked out spots in the top-10 list of best-selling games on PC and consoles.
Mobile games surpassed their PC and console counterparts in revenue last year for the first time ever. Global hits like Tencent’s Arena of Valor contributed to players spending $ 48.3 billion on mobile titles last year — a number that’s predicted to grow to $ 72.3 billion by 2020. Mobile esports is also on the rise in Asia, making the platform just that much more attractive to competitive games like Fortnite and PUBG.
