Fortnite Becomes First Free-to-Play Game on Xbox Cloud Gaming
- Laurent Giret
- May 05, 2022
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Microsoft has teamed up with Epic Games to make Fortnite the first free-to-play game available on Xbox Cloud Gaming. Starting today, the popular battle royale game is accessible on xbox.com/play, and the game also supports touch controls on phones and tablets.
“It’s an important step to add a Free-to-Play title to the cloud gaming catalog as we continue our cloud journey. We’re starting with Fortnite and will look to bring more Free-to-Play games people love in the future,” said Catherine Gluckstein, Vice President and Head of Product, Xbox Cloud Gaming.
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Fortnite coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming also means that iOS and Android users now have an alternative to using the native versions that Epic Games pulled from the App Store and Google Play Store last year. All you need to play is a web browser and a Microsoft account, though keep in mind that Xbox Cloud Gaming is currently only available in 26 markets.
Microsoft also used this Fortnite announcement to highlight Xbox Cloud Gaming momentum today:
- Xbox Cloud Gaming crossed 10 million players on more than 6,000 types of devices since launch
- Over 350 games on the Xbox Game Pass catalog are now cloud-enabled
- 150 of these cloud-enabled games now support touch controls
- On average, Microsoft sees a 2x increase in play for games that have touch controls, and 20% of Xbox Cloud Gaming users use touch exclusively.
- On average, Xbox Cloud Gaming players discover and play nearly twice as many games as Xbox Game Pass members who don’t play on cloud.
Xbox Cloud Gaming still requires a $14.99/month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription to access, but it’s good to see Microsoft starting to open up the platform with free-to-play games, no subscription required. “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. Quite simply we want you to have more choice in both the games you play and the way you choose to play them,” Gluckstein said today.