Xbox Cloud Gaming brings back Fortnite to PC and iOS Devices

Epic Games and Microsoft are collabing to bring back Fortnite to Xbox Cloud Gaming. Fortnite is now available to play on PC and even iOS and iPad devices through Xbox Cloud Gaming.

The company announced Thursday that it had partnered with Epic to make Fortnite available on Apple devices through its game streaming service, Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Fortnite is back, but you still won’t be able to just waltz into the App Store and ask for it. To play, you’ll need to hop onto Apple’s Safari browser and visit Xbox.com/play, a process that’s less straightforward but only takes a few minutes to set up, if that. You won’t need a paid subscription to start playing, though you will need to log in to a Microsoft account and link that up with your Epic Games account.

"Fortnite" will be free at Xbox Cloud Gaming as a result of a partnership with Epic.

Fans of the game can play on Apple iOS-powered devices, Android phones or tablets, as well as on Windows computers through web browsers, Gluckstein said.

Apple and Google dominate the market, with their operating systems running on the majority of the world's smartphones. Apparently, Apple foiled Microsoft’s plans to launch an expansive all-in-one Xbox Cloud Gaming iOS app by requiring individual games to be downloaded separately — a restriction that explains why Microsoft is pointing people to the browser for Fortnite instead of the App Store.

Microsoft says that Fortnite will be its first popular free-to-play cloud gaming title, but not its last. “At Xbox we want to make gaming accessible to the 3 billion players around the world, and cloud has an important role in that mission,” Xbox Cloud Gaming Head of Product Catherine Gluckstein said. “Quite simply we want you to have more choice in both the games you play and the way you choose to play them.” Epic Games said last month it had raised $2 billion from Sony Group Corp and the family owned holding company behind the Lego Group, valuing the “Fortnite” creator at $31.5 billion. (https://reut.rs/388XDb9) (Reporting by Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni) Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in three distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: Fortnite Battle Royale, a free-to-play battle royale game in which up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing; Fortnite: Save the World, a cooperative hybrid tower defense-shooter and survival game in which up to four players fight off zombie-like creatures and defend objects with traps and fortifications they can build; and Fortnite Creative, in which players are given complete freedom to create worlds and battle arenas.