Fortnite: Samsung may keep fans waiting longer for Android release

Fortnite is reportedly going to stay exclusive to select Samsung phones for weeks before it rolls out on other platforms.

Fortnite’s Android launch is anything but smooth (Epic Games)

Android users may have to wait longer for Fortnite game. The popular mobile game is highly rumoured to launch along with Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and stay exclusive to the phone for a few weeks. But a new report claims the Samsung-Fortnite arrangement may be for a longer period.

According to an Android Headlines report, Fortnite's Android iteration may stay exclusive to select Samsung phones — primarily the top-end devices such as Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S8 — for somewhere about 90-120 days.

The official Android rollout will take place after the exclusive arrangement. If the report is to be believed, Android users may have to wait until the end of this year.

Samsung's partnership with Epic Games, the studio behind Fortnite, is quite similar to Apple's strategy for Super Mario that launched exclusively on iOS for quite some time before coming to Android.

Considering the massive popularity of Fortnite among gamers around the world, Samsung may succeed in portraying its Galaxy Note 9 as a gaming phone. READ: Samsung looks to ride on Fortnite's success for its Galaxy Note 9 launch

Samsung's Note series is mainly associated with productivity and aimed at niche users. Also, the exclusivity may help revive fresh interest in the older models of Samsung as the company will face a big competition from upcoming launches from Apple and Google.

That said, Fortnite's Android launch isn't going to be that simple anyway. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny recently announced that the game will be available via direct download on Android phones instead of listing it on Google Play Store. This will mean users will have to enable downloads from "untrusted sources" via Settings on their phones.

Tim blamed Google's app economy for the decision to skip the Play Store launch.

"There's typically a 30/70 split, and from the 70%, the developer pays all the costs of developing the game, operating it, marketing it, acquiring users and everything else. For most developers, that eats up the majority of their revenue. We're trying to make our software available to users in as economically efficient a way as possible. That means distributing the software directly to them, taking payment through Mastercard, Visa, Paypal, and other options, and not having a store take 30%," he told VentureBeat.

"If you look at it, the stores on the smartphone platforms actually do very little. They'll put ads up in front of your game. When you search for Fortnite on iOS you'll often get PUBG or Minecraft ads. Whoever bought that ad in front of us is the top result when searching for Fortnite. It's just a bad experience. Why not just make the game available direct to users, instead of having the store get between us and our customers and inject all kinds of cruft like that? It's a general criticism I have of the smartphone platforms right now," he added.