You already spend every waking second of your time playing Epic Games’ Fortnite: Battle Royale on your consoles and PC, but when you leave the house, you’re forced to leave the multiplayer shooter behind. That will no longer be the case, however, as Fortnite: Battle Royale is coming to mobile devices with cross-platform play.
Epic Games announced the port of Fortnite — which we shall call “Portnite” — on its website late Thursday, March 8. Initially available on iOS, the game will eventually come to Android platforms as well. A special “invite event” for iOS users will begin shortly, and you can sign up right now for the chance to play.
Invitations will begin rolling out for iOS “as the servers can handle more players,” according to Epic Games, with Android expected to follow in a few months.
To play Fortnite: Battle Royale on iOS, you’ll need an iPhone 6S/SE or newer, or a newer iPad, such as the Mini 4, Pro, or Air 2. You’ll also need iOS 11 installed, which might be an issue if you’re using a slightly older model due to the effect it can have on your battery life.
Mobile players won’t just be playing with each other, either. The game will support cross-play and cross-save with PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, and Android. Xbox One also supports cross-play with PC, Mac, and mobile players, but not with PlayStation 4.
This isn’t due to a technical restriction. Back in September, Epic Games accidentally enabled cross-play between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of the game. Currently, the two platforms cannot play with each other, and Epic turned the “feature” off a short time later, calling it a “configuration issue.”
Microsoft is open to having cross-play between the two platforms, and has even enabled Xbox users and Switch users to play together in Minecraft, but thus far Sony has not budged.
Fortnite: Battle Royale has exploded in popularity recently, becoming the most-watched game on streaming service Twitch and putting its inspiration, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, to shame. In February, the game even managed to have 3.4 million simultaneous players. Battlegrounds recently launched its own mobile adaptations as well, though these are currently not available in North America and are not direct ports of the PC and Xbox One games.
Fortnite: Battle Royale is now available for free on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac. A 100-player, five-team mode is available now as well.
The “standard” version of Fortnite, which focuses on player-versus-environment content, can be purchased in several different editions which range in price from $40 to $150.
Updated on March 12: Added information on Xbox cross-play with other platforms, as well as the beginning of the invite event.
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