Apex Legends Mobile Still in Development
EA is working to bring Apex Legends to mobile devices, but is the game meant to be played that way?
| | During an earnings call in May 2019, EA’s Blake Jorgensen revealed that EA is working to bring Apex Legends to mobile devices and to port the game to China.
“We are in advanced negotiations to bring Apex Legends to China and to mobile, and we will update you on timeframes when those negotiations are concluded,” Jorgensen said. No additional information was given regarding the state of those negotiations.
While the mobile version has yet to come into fruition, EA did reassure shareholders during an earnings call in January that the publisher is still working on a mobile version with a partner that’s also helping bring the game to China.
“Rolling mobile out in China, you need to have a partner, and we’re—as we’ve said in the prepared remarks today—we’re working with a partner there, and we’re very excited about the opportunity,” said Jorgensen. “That partner is also helping us develop a mobile Apex for the globe—more to come on that in terms of timing.”
The release of Apex Legends on mobile might still be a little ways away, but at least we know EA hasn’t dropped the project.
Apex Legends coming to mobile isn’t so surprising. Respawn previously talked about wanting to port Apex Legends to the Nintendo Switch but stated that there was really nothing to talk about at that time. However, the studio hinted that there were other things being worked on. It’s quite possible the developer was referring to a mobile version of the game.
What’s a little surprising is the idea of Apex Legends actually working on mobile. Fortnite made a very successful leap to mobile, but it’s a far less demanding game. PUBG made the transition but not without its problems. Right now, Apex Legends still suffers from some netcode issues that keep it from running perfectly even on high-end PCs with stable internet connections. It’s a much more technologically demanding title that also emphasizes a higher speed of play. Could it really work on mobile devices?
Whether it can or not is probably less important to EA at the moment than the idea of attracting more players and expanding the game’s reach. While EA is reportedly happy with the game’s success thus far, Apex Legends has certainly lost players and is noticeably less popular on Twitch. The game’s slight drop can be partially blamed on the nature of the hype train, but it’s hard to deny that Apex Legends first season of content was kind of a bust and that substantial updates to the game have been few and far between.
Still, it would be nice to play a working version of Apex Legends on mobile devices sometime in the near future.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.