We don’t really cover Titanfall around here, but you might be interested all the same in Respawn’s new battle royale set in the same universe. Apex Legends is not, to the dismay of some franchise fans, a true followup to Titanfall 2; instead, it’s a first-person shooter-style battle royale, free-to-play with lockboxes and battle passes, and it hit the ground running on PC and console with an announcement and launch yesterday, which is a strange way to go about it.
Apparently the secrecy wasn’t some exciting new strategy; as GIbiz’s Christopher Dring put it, Respawn and EA were simply scared to take on a traditional PR hype cycle, knowing they’d be blasted by fans and press: “The conspiracy theories write themselves. EA, after sending Titanfall 2 out to die during a hyper competitive month, bought up the business and forced it to stop making Titanfall games and build a free-to-play title instead. […] So why risk it? Just get the game out there and avoid the months of PR hell that’ll only succeed in distracting and depressing the development team.” Yikes.
Regardless of all that, the game launched well, apparently hitting a million players on day one.
I’m so overwhelmed right now, @PlayApex broke a million unique players in under 8 hours. ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you so much for showing up and being part of this with @Respawn you are amazing!! pic.twitter.com/lvNgfwwKhl
— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) February 5, 2019
