Fortnite could be back on iPhone before year's end but not the App Store

fortnite on iPhone XR (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

Fortnite has been out of the App Store for longer than we'd hoped.
There's no sign of it coming back any time soon.
But Nvidia's streaming service might bring Fortnite to a web browser sooner.

Apple's spat with Epic Games continues and shows little sign of coming to an end any time soon, keeping Fortnite off the App Store. But gamers who have so far missed an entire season of Fortnite might be able to play on their iPhone and iPad by the end of the year according to a new report.

No, that doesn't mean that common sense has prevailed. Instead, it means that Nvidia's game streaming service is getting ready for launch.

According to a BBC News report, Nvidia's cloud gaming service could offer the solution Fortnite fans are crying out for before the year's end, so long as they don't mind playing via Safari.

Owners of iPhones and iPads will soon be able to play Fortnite again, via a cloud service, the BBC has discovered.Nvidia has developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs in the mobile web browser Safari.

That approach will bypass the App Store completely, although there's some debate over whether the resulting gameplay will be up to scratch or not. After all, can streaming a game via the web browser really allow players to compete with people playing natively? Possibly not, but it could still be better than the alternative – not playing at all.

Nvidia uses remote computer servers to process the players' commands and to generate graphics. Streaming the relevant data back and forth to the mobile devices introduces a very short delay.Winning or losing Fortnite's multiplayer battles can come down to split-second decisions, so lag could be a problem.

The BBC report says it's heard that Fortnite could be back on iPhone and iPad "before the winter holidays."

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.