While many people often point to Fortnite as the game that finally brought Cross-Play to the forefront, and it is, that is not the whole story. Years before that the option was being explored for fighting games. Since those games often had limited player bases on consoles and PCs, these player bases were consolidated to create longevity. An early example of this was Street Fighter 5. In this effort, PlayStation was actually at the forefront. Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO game, was also quick to adopt this feature. Both of these paths were taken before Fortnite appeared on consoles.
However, in recent years, PlayStation has been the outlier in the growing cross-play community. Most recently Borderlands 3 needed to pull away from the Sony-owned consoles as it went cross-play between every other marketplace. I’m not one to speculate on the so-called ‘console wars’ but coming out of the last generation the PlayStation did have stronger sales. Often the company that feels it is in the lead is the most hesitant to adopt major policy changes.
That being said PlayStation boss Jim Ryan stated in an interview with Axios, that he would like more games to feature cross-play on the System. In the interview, he stated “We support and encourage cross-play,” before pointing to games that already feature the game such as Fortnite and Minecraft, as well as the soon to have the feature Destiny 2. He then stated that the “number will continue to grow.”
A big thing that might stand in the way of achieving this came out last month during the Apple v Epic trial. According to reports Sony has asked for compensation should a studio which to enable cross-play with the system. Jim Ryan gave no indication during his interview if this policy will be changed in the future.
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