Xbox Cloud Gaming’s free Fortnite port has already been played by over 4 million players

Ben Schoon | Jul 27 2022 - 7:53 am PT

Microsoft has done a great job at building out the cloud gaming aspect of Xbox Game Pass, but perhaps its biggest win yet has come from a partnership with Epic Games’ Fortnite, which has already seen over four million players.

Earlier this year, Microsoft and Epic Games announced a partnership that would open up access to Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games, to all players through Xbox Cloud Gaming for free.

The target of the promotion was clearly at mobile users, who still cannot download Fortnite natively through the Google Play Store or Apple App Store, and it has clearly struck a chord with those players. As Tom Warren highlighted on Twitter, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during a recent call that nearly four million players have already played Fortnite through Xbox Cloud Gaming.

Four million is a huge number of players to try out the game over a new method in just three months, but it’s also not a huge surprise. The bulk of these players probably come from iOS, where options are severely limited for playing Fortnite – unlike Android, iOS blocks the ability to sideload apps. GeForce Now is one of the only other places where Fortnite can be streamed on an iPhone or iPad.

Breaking down that number, too, Nadella said that over one million of the players who have tried Fortnite through Xbox Cloud Gaming were new to the Xbox ecosystem, so the bid to attract more players is also clearly working out.

Nadella says more than 4 million people have streamed Fortnite on Xbox Cloud Gaming, including over 1 million who were new to the Xbox ecosystem

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— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) July 26, 2022

In May, Nadella also announced that over 10 million players had tried Xbox Cloud Gaming. A month later, it was revealed that keyboard/mouse support was coming to Xbox Cloud Gaming, and the service has also since expanded to an app on select Samsung Smart TVs.