We Still Don’t Know Whether Sony Will Allow Cross-Play With The Xbox One

It’s been fun this week seeing all the chatter about a world where PS4, PC and Xbox One players are all able to play together, in sort sort of unified gaming paradise. But the reality is much more complicated than that, as illustrated in a new interview Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida.

Talking to Eurogamer from the Game Developers’ Conference, the Sony Worldwide Studios president explained that it was simpler to enable cross-play between the PC and the PS4 because the former was an open platform.

But dealing with other closed networks though — the Xbox One, in other words — is another matter entirely.

“Connecting two different closed networks is much more complicated so we have to work with developers and publishers to understand what it is they are trying to accomplish,” Shuhei said. “We also have to look at policy issues and business issues as well,” he added.

The suggestion is then that the technical concerns in merging PC, PS4 and Xbox One players are the least problematic. The biggest question is whether it’s in Sony’s interest to do so. Rocket League seems like it’ll be the first game to have cross-play parity with all platforms.

Going forward though? I could very easily see a future where small titles and indie games can happily have cross-play across all platforms, while Sony and Microsoft battle it out to ensure AAA games only have cross-play with their networks.

[Eurogamer]


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