SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 16 — The Chinese company that has a stake in Fortnite developer Epic and developed PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for mobile is understood to be in negotiations over the latest hot Battle Royale title, Apex Legends.
Since Apex Legends was revealed and launched across PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on February 4, the free sci-fi multiplayer action game accumulated 25 million players over the course of its first week, snatching the Twitch TV record for hours viewed in a day from genre kingpin and mainstream breakout smash Fortnite.
Apex Legends publisher Electronic Arts is now said to be in discussions with Chinese internet firm Tencent over a deal to bring the new game to China, per a report in the South China Morning Post.
Tencent has already been doing the same for Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (aka PUBG.) It also owns the studio that makes another one of the world’s most popular video games, League of Legends.
Hot new Battle Royale Apex Legends title both conforms to and innovates on standards of the popular genre.
Lowering matches’ conventional 100-person headcount to 60 and automatically funnelling participants into squads of three (rather than allowing for solo play), Apex Legends encourages teamwork through a streamlined non-verbal communication system and provides a choice of playable characters with different interlocking traits, something commonly associated with non-Battle Royale successes Overwatch, Dota 2 or League of Legends.
Its US developer, the widely respected Respawn Entertainment, can trace its lineage back through sci-fi shooters Titanfall and Titanfall 2 through to the creation of the Call of Duty franchise. Apex Legends begun life as Titanfall 3 before embracing free-to-play and, at launch, a robust influencer marketing campaign that helped propel it towards the genre’s forefront. — AFP-Relaxnews
