Apex Legends Will “Soft Launch” For Mobile Devices in 2020

Apex Legends is coming to mobile devices in 2020, but is the game touch screen ready?

Apex Legends
Photo: EA

A mobile version of Apex Legends has been rumored for quite some time now, but it seems that EA and Respawn finally have plans to bring the battle royale title to mobile devices in the near future.

In a recent call with investors, EA CEO Andrew Wilson noted that the plan is to soft launch Apex Legends for mobile devices by the end of 2020. Unfortunately, Wilson did not provide any further details regarding what a soft launch means in this instance, which devices will support the mobile version of Apex Legends, or what changes may be made to the game in order to accommodate the generally reduced capabilities of mobile devices.

Furthermore, there’s no word on whether or not the mobile version of Apex Legends will support cross-play. While it was confirmed that the recently revealed Switch port of Apex Legends (which is also set to be released before the end of the year) will support cross-play functionality, EA and Respawn have yet to comment regarding the extent of the mobile version’s compatibility options in that respect.

It’s not unheard of for mobile versions of games to support cross-play with console and PC players, but we do wonder if the fast-paced nature of Apex Legends multiplayer would make it difficult to truly match mobile players with console and PC competitors. Then again, it somehow feels unlikely that Apex Legends mobile players would all be grouped together with no option to interact with the rest of the game’s playerbase, so we’ll certainly have to wait and see how this plays out.

Ad – content continues below

One thing that we can tell you is that Respawn is clearly making a push to expand Apex Legends‘ reach. Between the upcoming mobile version and the recently confirmed Switch and Steam ports of the game, quite a few new people will be able to access the battle royale shooter on their preferred devices.

That being said, it does feel that Apex Legends lost quite a bit of the initial momentum it enjoyed shortly after its surprise launch in 2019. CoD Warzone and Fortnite appear to be the battle royale leaders at the moment, but Apex Legends‘ foundation is solid enough that we wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it could make a comeback. The game’s last few updates have already shown Respwan’s desire to keep the game fresh and address player desires/concerns.

We’ll bring you more information about Apex Legends mobile version as it becomes available.