Epic Games has found a lot of success lately in the free-to-play business. The company just announced the Epic Games Store and even managed to get a lot of developers with exclusive agreements. Now, it seems like the publisher wants to tackle cross-play with a unified system. Today, Epic Games announced its cross-platform online services roadmap.
The main features are listed below as their pertain to console platforms.
- Cross-Platform Login, Friends, Presence, Profile, and Entitlements: Provides the core functionality for persistently recognizing players across multiple sessions and devices, identifying friends, and managing free and paid item entitlements. This will support all seven major platforms like PC, Xbox, iOS, Nintendo Switch, and more.
- Cross-Platform Voice: The team is building a new in-game voice communications service supporting all platforms, all stores, and all engines, which will be available for free.
- Cross-Platform Parties and Matchmaking
- Cross-Platform Data Storage and Cloud-Saved Games
- Cross-Platform Achievements and Trophies
A lot of these features should be available towards the end of 2019. It'll be interesting to see if these development tools are adopted by the gaming industry. Only time will tell.
For those of you who don't know, Fortnite is a free-to-play third-person shooter with building mechanics. The title has become a cultural sensation due to its unique blend of expressive gameplay. Back in February 2018, Epic Games stated that the title was played by roughly 3.4 million gamers concurrently. Since then, that figure has ballooned to 8.3 million. Considering that there are so many players, the revenue generated from people buying the campaign and microtransactions is significant to say the least.
See Fortnite at Microsoft Store
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