Fortnite for Android Beta launches with hefty requirements | Budget and Midrange Phone owners need not apply

[Jito463]

23 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Completely different devs tho. PUBG Mobile is made by Tencent. PUBG on PC is made by Bluehole/PUBG Corp.

It was merely an example of a similar game, ported to Android, which has lower system requirements.  The fact that it's horribly optimized on the PC was simply meant to display the stark contrast between the two games and their respective ports.

[Arika]

i do not look forward to the billions of threads asking "what is the cheapest phone i can buy to run Fortnite?"

[D13H4RD]

10 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

They meet the minimum requirements.

They do but I find it funny how they aren’t on the list but other phones with SD820 SoCs are.

 

11 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Meanwhile Fortnight on iOS can run on iPhones all the way back to the iPhone 6s and SE. Those phones are running SoCs from 2014 and they run the game well. Props to Apple for putting so much effort into CPU and graphics performance and making Metal to take advantage of all of that performance. 

*2015

 

The A9 in the 6s was when Apple started to push performance beyond high gear. 2015 was also the time where Android phones except Samsung flagships suffered greatly because of a great hand-warmer otherwise known as the Snapdragon 810.

[DrMacintosh]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

i do not look forward to the billions of threads asking "what is the cheapest phone i can buy to run Fortnite?"

Its going to be great though when the answer is the iPhone SE  

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Thank god the Galaxy A5 2017 isn't on that list. I don't need people pranking me by installing Fortnite on my phone. 

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Its going to be great though when the answer is the iPhone SE  

until people say

1. I don't like apple
2. that's too expensive
3. can't i just connect an eGPU to my phone?

[schwellmo92]

12 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I find that highly dubious.  Porting between PC and consoles is relatively easy, given that the hardware in consoles is virtually the same as in a PC.  Porting from x86 code to ARM is not so simple, particularly when dealing with very complex code such as in a video game.  I'm not a programmer, so take my opinion for what it's worth, but it seems to me that it would require significant rewriting of the code to be compatible (depending, of course, on how many x86 specific features were utilized by the game).

Depends what game engine they use, some of them are cross-platform (I.e Unity).

[Emberstone]

Gotta say, it runs really, really badly on my Galaxy S9. It stutters so badly I can't even aim. I've also set it to the lowest settings. Makes little difference.

 

I'm pretty sure my iPhone 6S had better frametimes.

[Doobeedoo]

While I don't care about the game. I wonder about Galaxy S6 though, I may just try it eventually. 

[D13H4RD]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

1. can't i just connect an eGPU to my phone?

You're giving me ideas 

[Arika]

3 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

is my phone bottlenecking?

D:

 

20 minutes ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

You're giving me ideas 

D:

[Drak3]

11 hours ago, Arika S said:

i do not look forward to the billions of threads asking "what is the cheapest phone i can buy to run Fortnite?"

To which Drak3 will answer only with the 512GB Note 9.

[D13H4RD]

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

To which Drak3 will answer only with the 512GB Note 9.

The Snapdragon one since it has a better GPU

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

The Snapdragon one since it has a better GPU

Nah, hot glue an RTX Titan to the back.

[NumLock21]

I just upgraded my phone with a 65 core xeon phi.

Can i run fortnite? Will it bottleneck my powervr rogue g6430 gpu?

  

[Mustalem93]

Am lucky to have s9+ its supported ?

But when and how can I download it?

 

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, Mustalem93 said:

But when and how can I download it?

When?  I don't know for sure.  How?  By going to Epic's website and then disabling the feature that blocks all non-store apps.

[matrix07012]

Why aren't some phones supported even though they meet the minimum requirements? I don't understand that.

[PCGuy_5960]

23 hours ago, Jito463 said:

It was merely an example of a similar game, ported to Android, which has lower system requirements.  The fact that it's horribly optimized on the PC was simply meant to display the stark contrast between the two games and their respective ports.

I don't think that PUBG Mobile is a PC port though. I'm pretty sure that it's built from the ground up, which is why it's better than PC PUBG in pretty much every way.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, matrix07012 said:

Why aren't some phones supported even though they meet the minimum requirements? I don't understand that.

Because of the sheer variety of Android phones, really.

 

Imagine you're testing the game.  If you want to ensure that it worked on most of the devices that are technically capable of handling it, you have to run tests on several dozen (if not hundreds of phones).  And you have to do this every time there's a significant patch.  It'd get pretty time-consuming, to put it mildly.  You know what's worse than having an unsupported device?  Making everyone on Android wait days for an update because an obscure phone crashes whenever players drink slurp juice.

 

The focus on a narrow set of commonly-used devices makes sure that Epic spends more time improving the game and less time squashing bugs.  Maybe the company will expand the compatibility list (beyond new devices, of course) as it becomes comfortable, but I don't see it opening the doors to absolutely every device that meets the basic performance needs.

[Guest]

On 12/08/2018 at 5:33 AM, ignaloidas said:

Yet you have to understand that PUBG mobile is basically a different game by diff rent company, it's minimal graphics doesn't look good on event 480p. And I expect that Fortnite has started by using the same codebase they have for PC and then optimizing down the road. IIRC they even said they would have crossplay with PC.

People don't want the same experience on a phone as they do on a PC. There is no keyboard and mouse and a much smaller screen - so why make the game harder to play?

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

People don't want the same experience on a phone as they do on a PC. There is no keyboard and mouse and a much smaller screen - so why make the game harder to play?

I still don't understand why anyone would even want to play a twitch-based shooter on a phone.  It just seems completely ridiculous to me.  Even if you use a controller instead of the touchscreen, it's still going to be an inferior experience.

[LAwLz]

59 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I still don't understand why anyone would even want to play a twitch-based shooter on a phone.  It just seems completely ridiculous to me.  Even if you use a controller instead of the touchscreen, it's still going to be an inferior experience.

Fortnite is not a twitch-shooter though.

[ignaloidas]

6 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

People don't want the same experience on a phone as they do on a PC. There is no keyboard and mouse and a much smaller screen - so why make the game harder to play?

I don't know, maybe they want to get not usual mobile crowd, but those who play Fortnite on PC already

[ScratchCat]

14 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Fortnite is not a twitch-shooter though.

It is exceptionally popular on Twitch (Fortnite streamer Ninja holds the record for the most live viewers) and while it is a more sandbox like shooter, not a pure bred shooter it is still closely related with many similar mechanics and so isn't as "easily" playable on a touchscreen.