Last week Epic has announced a new Fortnite tournament with a bit of a twist; it is exclusive to Xbox players. Up until now, Epic has focused on wide-ranging tournaments that treat all platforms equally. If you want to attempt the World Cup on a Switch, you’re welcome to try! This new tournament is a fresh foray into console exclusive tournaments that could shake up the competitive scene.
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The prize pool for the Fortnite Xbox Cup sits at $1 million. This makes it equal to the rounds of qualifiers that have been going on the last few months. Crucially though, it will only be open to console players. This is going to make some differences to the way the game is actually played. There’s a hard debate in the Fortnite community about the benefits of console players over PCs. Some proponents will argue that the ability to ‘LT Spam’ to build and aim assist give controller players an advantage. However, it is pretty widely accepted that PCs are a better way to compete in Fortnite.
Building isn’t everything, aim is pretty important too. Mouse and keyboard players have a massive advantage in this field. They also have the option of running the game at various frames per seconds and resolutions. This is a pretty clear advantage.
Console and PC players are sorted into the same lobby in previous in-game tournaments, making it difficult for them to achieve much beyond being part of the tournament.
While the Fortnite World Cup approach it’s unlikely that we’ll see too many big Fortnite pro players actually competing in this tournament. Between different controls and upcoming tournaments, the Xbox Cup will probably introduce the world to a new wave of talented Fortnite console players. We’ve seen some controller-based savants make progress in Competitive Fortnite before, it is possible more of these will now come to light.
What does Fortnite on Xbox look like?
While this tournament is on consoles, there is a crucial difference between playing on an Xbox and other consoles. Despite the machine’s lack of popularity in this generations console battle, it is the best option for achieving a higher and stable frames per second on a console. The Xbox One X, the pro version that we’ll likely see serious competitors using, is as heavily powered as a high-end gaming PC. This will mitigate some of the difference in performance between a standard tournament and those competing in this one.
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Another difference between an Xbox tournament and other consoles is mouse and keyboard. Microsoft has embraced this control style and you can plug them into an Xbox and play Fortnite. Typically, you’re in a server with other mouse and keyboard players when playing Fortnite on Xbox. However, with this tournament using separate servers, it is likely that you will be able to play with a mouse and keyboard in the first console exclusive tournaments.
With this in mind, it isn’t going to make too much of a difference compared with a normal cup. It is likely that we’ll see the winners using the mouse and keyboard set up, on a highly powered Xbox One X. Despite this though, it raises some interesting possibilities about other platforms developing a dedicated competitive scene in the future. Will we eventually have pro Fortnite mobile players?
