An executive at Epic Games has revealed why its hit battle royale game Fortnite isn’t available on Microsoft’s xCloud streaming service.
In a recent deposition stemming from Epic Games’ ongoing legal battles against Apple, Epic has indirectly revealed that it is reportedly intentionally withholding Fortnite from Xbox’s xCloud streaming service.
When asked why Fortnite isn’t available on xCloud, Epic Games’ Vice President of business development Joe Kreiner responded: “We viewed Microsoft’s efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings,” seemingly confirming the company has made a deliberate decision to withhold the game from Microsoft’s streaming platform on page 97 of the 321-page document.
The point was further reiterated when Krenier agreed that decision to withhold Fortnite from xCloud was a deliberate choice on Epic Games’ end.
The court document – which is largely redacted – seems to have questioned Kreiner more on the topic, although this cannot be confirmed until all information has been released to the public.
Elsewhere in the document, it was also revealed that Sony’s PlayStation 4 consoles account for the majority of Fortnite’s player base, with iOS gamers ranking among the bottom percentiles of total players.
The court documents showed that PS4 generated 46.8 per cent of Fortnite’s total revenues from March 2018 through July 2020, while Xbox One generated 27.5 per cent.
iOS ranked fifth, with just 7 per cent of total revenue, with the remaining 18.7 per cent being split between Android, Nintendo Switch, and PCs.
Epic Games’ ongoing legal battles with Apple started in August 2020 when Epic sued Apple for antitrust and anticompetitive behaviour. Apple had removed Fortnite from the App Store entirely after Epic Games refused to remove its in-game currency purchase options, which bypassed Apple’s App Store payment model.
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