Fortnite (Free) coming to Android is hardly a surprise, and honestly, is so inevitable that it’s barely newsworthy. Instead, how Fortnite is coming to Android is the far more interesting part of this story. You won’t be able to download Fortnite on Google Play, the Amazon App Store, or any other Android marketplace. Instead, Epic is rolling their own in what might be the boldest power play we’ve seen in the history of mobile. It cannot be overstated what a big deal this is, as Fortnite might be the only IP, game, app, or otherwise that actually has a chance at breaking the extreme platform monopoly that has formed in the mobile industry.
In the iOS world, we know all too well the complete stranglehold Apple has on all aspects of the platform. If you want to distribute software on the iPhone, you really have three options: 1. Use the App Store, and abide by all Apple rules and give Apple 30% of all your sales. 2. Distribute via one of the jailbreak repositories which likely locks out 99% of the people who might want to download your app, particularly as the jailbreak scene has diminished over the years. 3. You can distribute the raw Xcode file for people to compile and deploy directly on their own iPhones, which is even more complicated than jailbreaking. (There’s also comedy option #4 which is find a enterprise certificate to hijack and sign your apps, which was a loophole that emulators used to use.)
On Android, these things are far “easier,&...