The Epic Games Store could soon expand into the mobile ecosystem.

Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney has revealed that the Epic Games Store is coming to Android, and that he hopes to also bring it to iOS.

The CEO told Gamespot that it wants to bring the same philosophy of developer freedom to mobile.

“We’d like to bring the [Epic Games] Store to iOS in the future, and we will bring it to Android,” said Sweeney. “We think it’s a good way to help the industry [move] forward and it’s another way where Epic as a game developer had built up this audience around Fortnite and learned how to operate a distribution platform on PC and Android.”

“Now, as we’ve done with many things from the Unreal Engine to the Epic Online services, we open it up to all other developers to use with their games and are trying to serve the industry and provide a really interesting alternative to the ecosystem,” he added.

Indeed, the Fortnite Android launcher is now simply called the Epic Games App. Android, specifically, does allow for third-party-operated stores to exist on the platform. Amazon, Samsung and many other companies have their own separate stores on Android, something you cannot do on iOS.

It would make sense for the app handling Fortnite to expand into a full-on store. Epic’s long game is to make its tech and services ubiquitous. The publisher recently made the matchmaking and account services Fortnite uses free to Unreal Engine developers who want to use it, so there’s no reason it’ll stop there.

Posted: Jun 05, 2020 9:01 am
Related Forum: Mobile Devices

Source: https://www.vg247.com/2020/06/02/epic-games-store-android-ios/