Apex Legends has Already Surpassed 1 Million Downloads
Yesterday, Respawn Entertainment announced and released a new, free-to-play Battle Royale game, Apex Legends, and the game seems to be off on the right foot. Not just sprinting, but rocketing out the gate; in less than 8 hours, the game had reached over 1 million downloads. As per usual, this news comes from Twitter, where all news shall soon live, specifically from Respawn Entertainment Founder and CEO Vince Zampella’s twitter, who said he was “overwhelmed” by the support for Respawn’s newest venture.
Beyond all that, Respawn has also mentioned that Apex Legends iwill support cross-play compatibility, albeit without cross-progression. According to a lengthy interview with Eurogamer, Respawn menioned taht there were “plans to allow players to play with their friends on other platforms".
Although cross-play is unavailable at launch, Respawn told Eurogamer it "plans to allow players to play with their friends on other platforms". Cross-progress and cross-purchases, however, will never be possible in Apex Legends, "due to the way systems were set up early on" which "can't [be] reconciled after the fact". In other words, as cross-play only recently became a possibility, it will never be fully integrated into Apex Legends.
Even so, this could be good news down the line, even if switching platforms might force players to start their level progress from scratch. I think players would be more upset about losing purchases, but let’s worry about that when we get there.
That same article also goes into the reasoning behind Respawn shifting their focus from a potential Titanfall 3 and over to Apex Legends as their main focus for now (alongside the briefly announced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order).
Back in fall 2017, a Respawn source told Kotaku's Jason Schreier "Titanfall 3 was well into development" and would release by the end of 2018. The reason for the hurry was that the modified version of Valve's Source engine (used by the previous Titanfall games and reportedly also Apex Legends) - "was starting to feel dated", and "Titanfall 3 might not feel or look as good if it came out too much later" - which, clearly, it did not.
This fits with what McCoy explained to me: that progress towards Apex Legends began after Titanfall 2, when the developer experimented with battle royale, "decided this wasn't going to be a mode", and chose to make Apex Legends "a game on its own". It certainly feels like Apex Legends could have been a battle royale mode for Titanfall 3.
And, as Respawn is committed to building Apex Legends as a "proper live service game", it could be some time before we see a true sequel to Titanfall 2 - if indeed one is still on the cards.
That interview also dives into why there isn’t any wall-running or Titans, despite this being a Titanfall spin-off, set in that same universe. There’s a whole lot to digest in there, so get to it, dear reader.
And there you have it! There seems to be a lot of hubbub buzzing around Apex Legends. The game is free-to-play and available right now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Origin, so if you’re interested, and if you’re reading this deep into this article you certainly must be, go download it on your platform of choice right now.
