The Fortnite Android beta has finally been officially announced after many leaks, speculation, and rumours. At the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 event, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney took to the stage to confirm that Samsung Galaxy device owners are the first to be invited to Fortnite beta, starting right now plus a special Galaxy skin. Meanwhile, the official website has been updated to confirm that it's not only Samsung devices that will get access to Fortnite. The game will be rolled out to "a wider variety of devices in the next few days", though Samsung Galaxy smartphones such as the S7, S8, Note 8, as well as the Note 9 and Tab S4 will get access first. Other devices that will get the game include the OnePlus 6, Google Pixel 2, Asus ROG Phone, Nokia 8, and the Razer Phone to name a few.
If you were expecting Fortnite to run on budget Android smartphones like the Xiaomi Mi A2, that's not the case right now. The Fortnite Android beta download size is 1.88GB.
Unlike the Fortnite iOS beta, Epic hasn't stated if players receiving an invite will be able to invite their friends as well. Given the online nature of the game, you will need an stable, consistent Internet connection.
While Fortnite for Android won't be on the Google Play Store, you can get it via the Fortnite Installer. What this means is, you'll have to go to the official Fortnite site on your smartphone browser and download the Fortnite Installer APK file. But before that here's what you should do:
Why avoid Google Play? According to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, it's so the developer can have a "direct relationship with our customers on all platforms where that's possible", and to avoid "the 30 percent 'store tax".
"It's a high cost in a world where game developers' 70 percent must cover all the cost of developing, operating, and supporting their games," Sweeney explained. "And it's disproportionate to the cost of the services these stores perform, such as payment processing, download bandwidth, and customer service.
"We're intimately familiar with these costs from our experience operating Fortnite as a direct-to-customer service on PC and Mac," he added.
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