We’ve heard in the past that Sony isn’t very hot on the idea of cross-play, though nobody from it or PlayStation have said so officially. The word has mostly come from a variety of developers who have attempted to implement cross-play with their games to varying levels of success. And while Sony is more than happy to let the PS4 speak with the PC, the same can’t be said for the Nintendo Switch, and especially the Xbox One.
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The latest developer to come out and reveal Sony’s lack of enthusiasm over cross-play at the moment, is Hi-Rez Studios, the team most notably behind Paladins and SMITE. More specifically, word comes way of Paladins Executive Producer Chris Larson, who said the following when interacting with a fan on Twitter:
Sony is not too keen on x-play. 🙁
— HirezChris (@HirezChris) June 7, 2018
While cross-play has long been adopted by the PC platform, championed by Microsoft this generation, and even increasingly supported by Nintendo, Sony have drawn the line in the sand and have firmly stood on the other side, especially when it comes to having the PlayStation 4 talk to competitors, the Nintendo Switch, but more so the Xbox One.
In the past Sony have offered up explanations about player safety and the risk of linking its players with platforms it can’t control, but this has simply just caused many fans to roll their eyes even more.
The most common speculation for Sony’s position, is that as market leaders, it doesn’t see the need to allow Microsoft or Nintendo into the PS4 ecosystem at all. It’s dominating the Xbox One, selling an expected two PS4s for every one Xbox One sold, so naturally Sony doesn’t want to help Microsoft as it dangles beneath it.
However, while this may be the plan, the conversation around cross-play quickly dissolved into Sony being the bad guy who’s holding back not only mutliplayer, but the industry. And it might be, depending on what perspective you choose to take.
With E3 set to kick off tomorrow, there will naturally be many interviews with Xbox and PlayStation heads popping up over the next few days, and if I was a betting man, I’d bet that the topic of cross-play will come up at least once or twice.
