Fortnite is already available to download on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch via each platform's official store. It is also available on the iPhone and iPad via Apple's app store, where Apple takes a 30% cut of sales.<doc-sep>Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021. Earlier this week, speculation spread that Fortnite wouldn’t be landing in the Google Play Store when it arrives on Android devices. Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has confirmed that this is correct; the mobile version of the battle royale hit will be available for download directly from the developer’s website, not Google Play. Sweeney cites two main reasons for the decision: “First, we want to have a direct relationship with our customers wherever we can. On open platforms like PC and Android, it’s possible for them to get the software direct from us. We can be in contact with them and not have a third-party distributor in between,” said Sweeney in an interview with GamesBeat. “The second motivation is the economics of the store ecosystem as it exists right now.” The Apple App Store and Google Play both take a 30 percent cut of apps’ revenue. In Sweeney’s opinion, mobile marketplaces don’t actually benefit developers. Studios eat the cost of doing business, like marketing and user acquisition, while surrendering 30 percent of their revenue. Meanwhile, the Apple App Store and Google Play are serving up ads to players that might push competing games. “When you search for Fortnite on iOS, you’ll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite,” said Sweeney. “It’s just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It’s a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now.” Really, how did we get to this state? The store prioritizes ad revenue above user intent, so now developers buy ads in front of each others’ products so that exactly nobody’s search results lead to the actual thing they typed. Who in this cycle isn’t crazy? — Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) July 19, 2018 Epic has rejected the 70/30 split on its own platform, the Unreal Engine Marketplace. In early July, it bumped up developers’ revenue to 88 percent, and creators will also be getting a belated windfall as Epic has promised to pay that rate retroactively for sales from the last four years. “We’re trying to make our software available to users in as economically efficient a way as possible,” said Sweeney. “That means distributing the software directly to them, taking payment through Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and other options, and not having a store take 30 percent.” This does mean that Android players will have to set up payment in order to make purchases in Fortnite. It will be an extra step for folks who already have all those details sorted out on Google Play. But Sweeney says that it’s worked for players on PC, so he’s not concerned that that will deter people. “It’s on us to make payment as simple as possible. It’s a free game that anyone can download and play, and the only way we make money from it at all is if users love the game and decide to buy stuff, if they’re willing to do that,” said Sweeney. “Our experience is that that’s worked just fine. If you really care about a game, spending a couple of minutes setting up payment is perfectly reasonable. It’s certainly happened with Fortnite. All the stores that operate independently on PC, like GOG and Steam, have all gone through that process. If you look at the economics of it, it’s not worth, say, 25 percent of gross revenue to save the effort of setting up a payment method on our platform.” Fortnite has been an enormous success on iOS devices, raking in more than 100 million downloads and $160 million in revenue in less than half a year. It will likely be just as much of a hit on Android — and this time, Epic won’t have to share its good fortune with a middleman.<doc-sep>The hype surrounding the debut of Fortnite for Android is, needless to say, massive. Users are extremely excited for this launch, but the details surrounding it are looking pretty bleak… If you’ll recall last week, it was revealed in source code that Epic Games was potentially skipping distribution of Fortnite through the Google Play Store and, instead, offering the APK through its website. Now, Epic’s CEO has confirmed that. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, sat down with VentureBeat this week to discuss Fortnite, and the Android release was a big topic. One of the key takeaways, first off, was that the game won’t be available through the Google Play Store. Instead, Epic will distribute the Android release as an APK download through its own website. Sweeny explains: We’re distributing Fortnite to Android users from epicgames.com. You go to our website, click the download button, and go through some prompts to download and install Fortnite. There’s no third-party store involved at all. It’s just like the PC experience, the way that PC and Mac users install Fortnite. That now works on Android, which is possible because Android is an open platform. He further explains that Epic is going this route, firstly, to have a “direct relationship” with its customers. The second (and probably primary) reason, though, is to avoid the “economics of the store ecosystem.” In short, Epic is avoiding the 30/70 split with Google Play for in-app purchases. That shouldn’t be a shock considering the massive amounts of income the iOS release has seen, and those fees still apply on the App Store. On the Android release, payment will be available via credit cards and PayPal. I’d still argue that this is a huge mistake simply because it’s going to put a lot of users at risk in terms of security, but considering the hold Epic Games has over so many players with this massive hit of a game, I don’t think many are going to complain, and that’s a shame. On the bright side, Sweeney did reveal a few of the qualifications of Fortnite for Android. It won’t be based on the OS version, but rather the specifications of the device. He says that Fortnite will run on “high-end” Android phones, saying that of the “2.5 billion Android devices in the world or so, 300 million will run it well.” Sweeney also praised development of the game on Android as well. Our experience in building Fortnite for Android specifically has been really positive. Android is an awesome open platform. It’s underappreciated as an open platform. Since the very beginning it’s supported installation of third-party apps, and with Android Oreo that support has gotten a whole lot better. It’s a really robust framework for ensuring user security and giving users full control over what’s happening on their device. We’re thrilled with it, and we’re excited about that general direction in the industry. We still don’t know exactly when Fortnite is going to debut on Android, but as we first reported last month, it could arrive exclusively on the Note 9 this month. From there, it may end up being a Samsung exclusive for a while as well. Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news:<doc-sep>Elevate your enterprise data technology and strategy at Transform 2021. Tim Sweeney is quiet as CEOs go. But the head of Epic Games isn’t shy when it comes to expressing his opinions about the state of games, game development, and the need for open technology initiatives to ensure the industry’s future growth. Epic Games is launching Fortnite on Android soon, using direct downloads from the Epic Games site rather than the Google Play store. I talked about to Sweeney in advance of the launch of the Android version of Fortnite, which now spans all major platforms on consoles, mobile, and PC. The game is a living example of how you can take an Unreal Engine game and make it run across any platform where people want to play games. I have loaded the game on an Android device using Epic’s Fortnite installer, and it worked. We talked about the launch of Fortnite on Android. But we also had a wide-ranging discussion about how Fortnite is helping with the development of the Unreal Engine, the importance of blockchain to the open Metaverse, the rise of Fortnite esports, why you won’t find Fortnite on Google Play, and Sweeney’s ongoing efforts to ensure that gaming remains as open a business as possible. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Image Credit: Epic Games GamesBeat: This must have been a lot harder to do, because there are so many versions of Android. How did you approach covering all the ground? Tim Sweeney: That’s a general issue with Android. There’s a huge variety of OS versions and also a much wider range of hardware specs than any other device family, from a $30 phone you can buy in India to a $1,000 high-end device. The nature of Fortnite determined the direction here. Fortnite is the same game on all platforms, including high-end consoles and PCs. Fortnite is going to work on high-end Android devices. Of the 2.5 billion Android devices in the world or so, 300 million will run it well. GamesBeat: Is it just on the Oreo version of the OS, or will you get to more versions than that? Sweeney: The actual Android version isn’t as much of a determining factor as the CPU and graphics processor set. Any device from up to three years ago with a high-end GPU should run the game pretty well. Oreo brings a large set of improvements to the installation experience. It’s a much better open platform with a much better installation process for software from other sources than the Google Play store. But the game is broadly compatible with everything that meets the specs. GamesBeat: It’s an interesting technology statement. Is it also fun to play, when you’ve got mobile people against PC people? Sweeney: If you’re playing alone as a mobile player, or you’re squadding up with other players on Android and iOS, you’ll be matchmade only with other mobile players. You have parity there. If you want to squad up with people on other platforms, Android supports cross play with every console, computer, and mobile platform. Then you’re matchmade with the general population of the game, which can include mobile, PC, and console all together. If you choose to do that, there are going to be players with different controllers. That’s up to you. What we’re finding, really, is that the magic of the experience is that everyone can play together with all of their friends. In a single living room you can have a PlayStation player, someone on their laptop, someone on an iOS device, and someone on an Android device all playing in a single game session together. The experience of being together socially is so awesome that it kind of negates the control differences. GamesBeat: Sony still hasn’t quite made everyone happy, though, right? Sweeney: Every case of cross-platform play and cross-platform purchasing is supported except for the pairings of PlayStation and Xbox, and PlayStation and Switch. As an Xbox or PlayStation player you can still play together with PC and all the smartphone devices. In a typical living room scenario, if you have a console and a laptop and some people on smartphones, you have pretty good connectivity there. GamesBeat: When you have iOS playing with Android, what kind of experience is that going to be? Sweeney: That works great. They’re platforms with similar ranges of performance and similar controls. The experience feels perfectly natural. It’s essentially the same games on all platforms, albeit with separate control schemes for PC, mobile, and console. All mobile devices have the same control scheme. There’s a lot of parity in the behavior there. Image Credit: Epic Games GamesBeat: You guys just announced the Unreal Engine 4.20 this week. Does that come into play here at all as far as the timing of the Android version of Fortnite? Sweeney: For the past six months we’ve done a huge amount of work to optimize the Unreal Engine for all mobile devices, and especially optimizing for Android compatibility and Android performance with Vulkan and OpenGL. All the optimizations we’ve done to date for Fortnite on Android are in that version. The real goal of all of this that we’re doing with Unreal Engine is make it possible to build a console-quality game, one of the most beautiful high-end games in the industry, and then release it on everything, reaching a much larger audience than just the owners of high-end gaming-focused devices. As a console developer you’re targeting an installed base of, what, 80 million PlayStations, maybe half that many Xbox Ones, and the growing Switch market? The smartphone space has literally billions of devices that can play these games, depending on the performance tradeoffs. It’s a huge opportunity for everybody. GamesBeat: Do you already see some games in the pipeline that are going to do this, to go across all the platforms with Unreal? Sweeney: ARK: Survival Evolved, the dinosaur survival game, is coming to iOS and Android. That’s just one of them. In Korea, where there’s not a lot of console market, we’re seeing some incredible console-quality games at the top of the mobile game charts.<doc-sep>
When "Fortnite" finally arrives on Android in the coming weeks, you won't find it on the Google Play Store. Instead, Epic Games says, you'll download the game directly from Epic. By skipping the Google Play Store, Epic Games doesn't have to pay Google a cut of the massive profits from "Fortnite." Sorry, Google: When the biggest game in the world, "Fortnite," arrives on Android in the coming weeks, it's skipping Google's Play Store. Instead, interested players will download the game directly from its maker, Epic Games . It's a smart move for Epic Games, who won't have to pay Google the usual 30% cut from the game's profits. "The 30% store tax is a high cost in a world where game developers’ 70% must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games," Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney told me in an email interview this week. "There's a rationale for this on console where there's enormous investment in hardware, often sold below cost, and marketing campaigns in broad partnership with publishers," he said. "But on open platforms, 30% is disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service. We’re intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating 'Fortnite' as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac." Sweeney would know, as Epic Games is already paying that "high cost" on Apple's iPhone and iPad. Apple is taking a 30% cut of all money made by "Fortnite" on iOS devices. The Battle Pass in "Fortnite" costs about $10. Epic Games Additionally, by handling distribution and maintenance of "Fortnite" itself, Epic Games can maintain a "direct relationship" with its players, says Sweeney. That said, even blockbusters like "Pokémon Go" use Google Play for distribution. It's the app store on Android, and the place where people would expect to find "Fortnite" for download. In so many words: What Epic is doing sounds weird because it's pretty weird. It also makes a lot of sense given the position "Fortnite" is in — it's the most popular game in the world. A major reason for distributing games on Android through Google Play is discovery. How else will people find your app if it's not in the store? But people are already acutely aware of "Fortnite," and navigating to a website on their phone instead of the Google Play Store isn't a huge ask. As Sweeney put it: "The installation process is pretty straightforward and is only a one-time effort, so the downsides are quite small." "Fortnite" is expected to arrive on Android at some point this summer — Epic Games hasn't put a firm release date on it yet, but rumors point to a late August launch on Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 9 phone with a wider Android launch in late September.