It is obvious that the EA game Apex Legends has become one of the most played games in 2019. Since EA released the game, it reached 50 million players in 1 month, becoming the most streamed game for a while. However, the momentum of player growth has decreased massively in resend weeks.
That is the problem with “overnight success”. If one game becomes very popular suddenly, it is hard to keep up with that speed and coming up with new things to keep the players interested. As Apex Legends became a greater threat to Fortnite, Epic Games responded with Fortnite Tournament, New Season Patch and “Avengers: Endgame” update, which obviously effected Apex.
As the competition is heating up, Respawn Entertainment decided to refresh Apex Legends as an answer to Fortnite, with Season 2 which will be revealed at E3 2019. They also announced that the game will be coming to mobile. Nobody knew that mobile gaming could become so popular, despite its impracticality. When Epic introduced Fortnite for mobile, they had over 200 million users in December 2018. Nowadays, major tech companies even develop special gaming phones for better user experience. Even Blizzard announced the release of Diablo Immortal mobile game.
With the power of the devices today, many people can enjoy playing large games on their portable devices with high-quality graphics at high speed.
On May 7, during EA’s conference call, they announced that they had trouble keeping their battle royale game popular on Xbox One, PS4, and PC and confirmed the plans to expand their users by making a mobile version of the game. They also came out with a statement that 30% of all Apex Legends players were new to EA, proving the fact that if this game comes out for mobile they will expand their audience even more.
What devices will be capable of running Apex Legends?
There are still no further details on the specifications and requirements of the game. Seeing from a technical aspect, Apex Legends is a game with a large map and many features, so maybe older iOS and Android devices will show struggle running it smoothly. Don’t expect horse racing results, if you have a phone who can’t support high def apps.
However, if your device supports the game, make sure you have an external battery charger, as it will drain it very fast.
When will Apex Legends come to mobile devices?
As we mentioned, EA’s new project does not contain any specific details. They just announced their intentions of bringing the game to mobile devices. Although, when they were talking about this project, they mentioned that they aim to be in Q3 of 2019. So, we will have to wait until Fall to experience the game on a mobile device.
EA and Respawn seem to create things which are similar to Epic. With the announcement of bringing the game to Android and iOS devices, as well as coming to China, they look like they copy some of Epic’s strategy moves which are obviously the recipe for success.
The giant videogames company experienced disappointment with their other big game “Anthem” which started out brilliantly and ended up not meeting the company’s expectations. So, basically, Apex Legends is all they have at the moment. Constant updates, following the world’s events, creating tournaments, crossplay between consoles are some of the features that they must work on, in order to keep the momentum.
Crossplay means that you can play alongside players that play on a different console than you. Since Fortnite added crossplay, they had huge user and active player boost. EA announced that they were also working on that feature, but it will take time as the game and the servers are complicated.
Battle Royale games are huge nowadays, so maybe that is why everybody is constantly comparing Apex Legends to Fortnite. Both games have extraordinary mechanics supported by their creativity. They even use similar strategies to promote, run, distribute and develop their games.
For now, we will just have to wait and see if what the game will be like on our portable device as well as see if our devices will be capable of running it. Hopefully, EA will meet our expectations with creating a playable game even on our smart devices which will defiantly keep the player’s interest in the game.
Visual journalist/Graduating student, University of Missouri-Columbia. Lover of everything in the gaming industry and an avid fan of all films!
