Despite Epic’s battle against Apple, Fortnite is officially returning to iPhone

On the other hand, Epic Games has made Fortnite available on Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming streaming service. Among other things, this means that the popular game is again officially available to play on iPhone for the first time since it was discontinued in the midst of the recent legal battle between Epic and Apple.

A Microsoft Xbox blog post states that all you need to play Fortnite on almost any device with a screen is a Microsoft account, internet access, and a device.

At least part of Microsoft’s hopes here are probably that long-frustrated iPhone Fortnite players will log in to play the game on their phones, see how well it performs, and then sign up for the full service to gain access. for premium games.

Fortnite was one of the most popular games on the iPhone (and almost every other platform) until Apple removed it from its app stores shortly before Epic sued Apple over a range of App Store-related issues.

The lawsuit resulted in some minor wins for Epic, but mostly big wins for Apple, and Fortnite didn’t make it back to the App Store.

In the course of the litigation, it emerged that Epic refused to make Fortnite available on the Microsoft service because Epic considered the service to be competitive for its purposes on the PC platform, so Thursday’s announcement is the opposite.

However, if the game hadn’t made it to the iPhone through Microsoft’s service, it would have ended up there anyway. Nvidia is in closed beta testing of its own streaming service for the iPhone (also featuring Fortnite), but it has yet to see widespread adoption.