Quentyn K. August 3, 2019
Apex Legends in a great place right now but Electronic Arts isn’t going about to get complacent.
The company outlined some big plans for the battle royale in a recent earnings call. The biggest news comes with EA’s confirmation that a mobile version of Apex Legends is still in the works.
This is great news for fans of the title.
EA has long acknowledged its intent to release the game on mobile platforms but has offered few details on it since the game’s explosive launch in February. That didn’t really change in this earnings call as no release date was offered. The lack of updates over recent months has led some to question whether an Apex Mobile was anywhere close to being finished, but the earnings call should soothe some of that concern.
Of course, there has never been any doubt about whether Apex Legends was destined for a mobile release.
Genre rivals Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds both have wildly popular mobile versions that have hundreds of millions of users. The iOS and Android ports of PUBG and Fortnite serve an important dual purpose, bringing in exorbitant sums of cash while also serving as a way into the Asian market. PUBG Mobile has been so popular that it has been banned in multiple countries because it is assumed to be addictive.
This fact isn’t lost on EA, who would be leaving money on the table by not rolling out a mobile Apex Legends.
It is unclear how EA will handle Apex Mobile but it stands to reason that there will be differences, especially in the areas of graphical fidelity and controls. That said, EA is no stranger to developing mobile titles so the game itself is likely to be of high quality.
Also discussed during the earnings call was Apex’s launch in China. Though the game is well-established in Europe and the Americas at this point, the game has not yet gone live in the world’s second-largest market.
China offers massive revenue potential for video game publishers and other tech companies, but the country’s encroachment on the privacy of its citizens has become a major ethical concern in recent months. League of Legends publisher Riot Games recently came under fire for an update in the game that helped China track the amount of time players in the country spend logged in.
How EA handles those issues remains to be seen.