It seems EA is going through a period of introspection at the moment. Not only are their games now returning to Steam (starting with the new Star Wars game), they’re also not even doing a Battlefield game next year. Lots of news regarding their recent earnings call have been surfacing around the web, and normally it wouldn’t apply to us as EA’s track record on mobile hasn’t been amazing…
… except they’ve now decided to bring Apex Legends to mobile.
What is Apex Legends? It’s basically Fortnite, except it’s made by someone else (the dev team who made Titanfall, if that matters). It’s actually done really well for itself in terms of carving out its own slice of the Battle Royale Pie that’s basically defined 2019, and it now seems to be one of EA’s most lucrative properties.
Andrew Wilson, EA’s CEO, confirmed during the earnings call that they’re going to focus more on live-service games, and that Apex Legends specifically is going to become a long-term franchise for them, and that includes taking the game to “mobile, new platforms and new geographies.”
Blake Jorgensen, the CFO and COO for EA, was a little more specific. They’re looking at doing this new roll-out in the 2021 ‘fiscal’ year, which actually starts on October 1st, 2020. That means we should hopefully see Apex Legends on Mobile towards the end of next year.
Whether that means just iOS, or iOS and Android is anybody’s guess, but Fortnite’s done very well for itself on mobile platforms so there’s no reason why Apex shouldn’t do the same.. As far as free-to-play games go, Battle Royales are actually incredibly tame – the action and core mechanics are all free, and it’s mainly just about buying avatar skins to express yourself.
I don’t expect we’ll hear more on this for a while, but if there is any new information we’ll keep you informed.
https://www.sickgaming.net/blog/2019/10/...to-mobile/