Psyonix releases Rocket League mobile game for Android and iOS this year
Developer Psyonix will release a mobile version of Rocket League later this year. Rocket League Sideswipe will be available for Android and iOS. The mobile game will be free-to-play, as will the PC and console version.
The mobile game will include local and online multiplayer, where players will compete in two-minute 1v1 or 2v2 matches. According to Psyonix, the core of Sideswipe is similar to the full version of Rocket League, although the mobile version features a different camera perspective and touch controls to make the game more playable on smartphones.
Psyonix reports that Rocket League Sideswipe will be released later this year, but the company does not mention a concrete release date. The developer does write that Android users from Australia and New Zealand can participate in a temporary regional alpha test of the game from today. In time, multiple beta versions of the game should become available, about which Psyonix will share more details in the coming months.
Rocket League Sideswipe will be free-to-play. That’s not surprising given that Psyonix was acquired by Epic Games in 2019 and the two companies later made the full version of Rocket League free-to-play as well. Mobile games also appear to be very popular; For example, earlier this week it was announced that the mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is made by Tencent, downloaded a billion times. Last year, Activision announced that Call of Duty Mobile has been downloaded more than 300 million times. Among Us had more than half a billion active players in November 2020, of which 97 percent played the smartphone version.
Several other game studios are also working on mobile games from popular franchises. For example, Nintendo is working with Pokémon Go developer Niantic on several mobile augmented reality games, including a Pikmin game due out later this year. A new PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds game for smartphones is also coming, called PUBG: New State. Riot Games already released a League of Legends game for smartphones last year.