Epic Games doesn't want Fortnite on Xbox Cloud Gaming
Passing the V-buck.
Fortnite maker Epic Games has said it doesn't want to make its blockbuster battle royale available via Xbox Cloud Gaming.
In comments made as part of Epic's ongoing court case against Apple, and reported by The Verge, Epic business boss Joe Kreiner said xCloud was seen as a competitor.
"We viewed Microsoft's efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings," Kreiner said. Follow-up questioning on the subject has not been made public.
Epic, of course, already has streaming plans for Fortnite tied up with Nvidia GeForce Now - where any revenue made will go back to Epic in its entirety.
It's this which Epic presumably doesn't want to compromise on - versus xCloud's use of Xbox architecture, Xbox's storefront, and Xbox's policies over the cut kept by Microsoft.
Both Nvidia GeForce and xCloud have developed in-browser streaming methods to counteract Apple's refusal to let other game storefronts launch on iPhones and iPads. The difference, of course, is GeForce streams from PCs, where Epic is used to getting 100 percent of the profit. On console, PlayStation and Xbox both keep a typical 30 percent cut of purchases.
It's an interesting point in Epic's ongoing legal wrangling with Apple - and its argument that platform holders such as Apple should allow alternative payment methods (the thing which got Fortnite kicked off the iPhone App Store in the first place).
Over two years of availability on the App Store, Fortnite racked up $700m in customer spending. This sounds a lot - and it is - though further court documentation reported on by The Verge shows this is actually one of the smallest pieces of Fortnite's overall revenue pie.
Nearly half of customer spending on Fortnite between March 2018 and July 2020 came from PlayStation 4, with around a quarter from Xbox One. iOS accounted for just seven percent of spending - less than all other consoles, including Nintendo Switch, and PC.