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EA had announced in May last year that Apex Legends would be coming to mobile but had not given us a definite timeline. In a video leaked on Twitter by ‘Apex Legends Mobile Latest Leaks’, EA CEO Andrew Wilson is heard talking about Apex Legends coming to mobile with a ‘soft launch’ by end of 2020.
In a recent EA Fireside chat, Wilson talks about mobile titles and their growth. He mentions, “We have PvZ3 (Plants vs Zombies 3) in soft launch, we’ve talked about having Apex Legends in soft launch by the end of this year. You’ve heard me talk about various other games in incubation or production”.
(Also read: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Reveals Project “NEXT”)
This reveal comes just after EA’s Play Live event which was held last week. During the event, EA made a number of announcements for its games including that Apex Legends would be coming to Steam and Nintendo Switch. EA also announced crossplay support across all its platforms. Crossplay has been quite a touchy subject for streamers and pro players of games like Fortnite, with many expressing the opinion that it is unfair to players due to the inherent advantage of a mouse and keyboard over a handheld controller and other graphics restrictions. With Apex Legends coming to mobile, it will be interesting to see if the crossplay feature is extended and how players react to it.
Image courtesy Apex Legends Twitter |
What does Apex Legends coming to mobile mean?
A soft launch means that Apex Legends coming to mobile will only be available for a limited test, either in terms of a few selected users or select markets before the full launch. With Apex Legends coming to mobile, it will be interesting to see how the game performs against its competition. PUBG Mobile is currently one the most popular battle royale games but Call of Duty: Mobile is growing in popularity as well.
Apex Legends was released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in February last year as a free-to-play battle royale game. The battle royale game launched in February 2019 and reached 2.5 million players in just a few days. The game had 10 million players in under a week, growing exponentially to 25 million just over a week after its launch. It then hit 50 million players in March 2019, just a month after its launch. Since then, growth has slowed down but with Apex Legends coming to mobile now, the player growth may pick up again, and possibly eat into PUBG Mobile and Garena Free Fire’s numbers.
Apex Legends will arrive on Android and iOS by the end of 2020.
