Nvidia has announced that Fortnite is coming back to iPhones with its cloud gaming service, despite the fact that Apple has thrown the game away from its App Store.
The company’s GeForce Now service is now accessible via the Safari web browser, totally bypassing the store.
In the ongoing legal dispute with the owner of the title, Epic Gaming, Apple has banned Fortnite from its services.
Nvidia said that the touch-enabled Fortnite was “coming soon” to the mobile browser.
GeForce Also typically broadcasts PC games over the internet without needing to instal them, delivering games on-the-go with a keyboard, mouse and/or controller if there is a strong internet connection.
Usually, a gamepad would be the only option on iOS.
However the implementation of touch controls in Fortnite’s Safari-based version means that it won’t be the same as the one that normally runs on PCs. Nvidia said the move “will delay availability of the game”
- Apple bans Fortnite from the App Store
- Apple Fire Back in the Fortnite App Store Battle
- The Developer Alliance took over the Apple App Store
“While the GeForce Now library is best experienced on mobile with a gamepad, touch is how over 100 million Fortnite gamers have built, battled and danced their way to victory,” he said.
For Nvidia, the move is more than just Fortnite. Apple also imposed extreme limitations on gaming broadcast applications, which means that GeForce Now, Google Stadia, and Xbox streaming have all been unable to run on Apple mobile devices on their own native apps. But streaming applications from a web browser-instead of a dedicated app-is enabled under the Apple rules.
Alongside the Safari edition of the browser, Nvidia said it would introduce another version of the web browser for Chrome in early 2021.
George Jijiashvili, a game analyst at Omdia, was pessimistic about how long the service would last.
“GeForce Now will serve as an official workaround for iOS users, but I believe that a reaction from Apple is imminent, which could possibly lead to blocking or diminishing the quality of the service on Safari,” he cautioned in a blog post.
Others however, are already working to carry games to Apple devices by a similar path.
Google has just announced that its Stadia service will shortly be running on iOS devices with a web app.
And early on, Amazon’s Lumia is operating well during the test phase using a browser-based approach.
