Gamers and developers have been privately and publicly screaming at Sony for years to open the cross-play floodgates to their platform. Finally, that battle might be over.

While PlayStation is arguably the more popular of the consoles, its quality exclusives such as Horizon Dawn, God of War and The Last of Us mean a large portion of the gaming community misses out or is forced to purchase a PlayStation to play them. Recent comments from a Sony executive suggest, however, it's considering making things a little less exclusive for some upcoming titles.

Dauntless, an online multiplayer game inspired by Monster Hunter that officially released earlier this week, has been slammed with matchmaking issues and server problems in its opening days, but its developers say things will get better.

In a recent interview with Game Informer, the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios said that the company was “open for business” when it comes to cross-play between PlayStation 4 and other consoles. The makers of games like Smite and Wargroove say that’s not the case.

If you're a parent and you've gone through the trouble of setting up child accounts for your little ones, chances are you will have run into an aggravating bug. It's arisen a lot more with Fortnite, where parents quickly realised that they couldn't play Fortnite with their kids if they were trying to play on another platform.

Fortunately, that annoyance is coming to an end.

Rocket League, everyone’s favourite car soccer game, has been at the forefront of discussions around online cross-play for several years now. Long before Sony agreed to play nice with the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One when it came to Fortnite, Rocket League studio Psyonix has been working to create unified player accounts across the different versions of the game. In a announcement today, the studio said that feature has once again been delayed.

In a post on the Fortnite subreddit and Twitter today, Epic announced that it’s working to let players unlink their accounts from a particular console and, in the near future, ultimately be able to merge them so their progress carries over no matter where they play the game.

Having resisted for so long, Sony is finally giving in and allowing cross-play on the PS4 “for select third party content”, meaning PlayStation 4 owners will soon get to play the same game against people on competing consoles.

In 2013, Sony handily won the war of words against Microsoft's customer-unfriendly policies, but in 2018, we're seeing a role reversal. On this week's Kotaku Splitscreen, let's discuss.

Right now, if you download Minecraft on Switch, you can play with any of your friends who are on PC. You can play with any of your friends who are on Xbox, or even on their phones. There's just one glaring omission on this list, and it ain't the Ouya.

Earlier this week, Nintendo delighted Fortnite fans by announcing that the game, which might just be the most popular game being played right now, was coming to the Switch immediately. Even better, Switch players would be able to compete with PC and Xbox players, too - instant digital distribution and multiplayer open to all!

Nintendo's announcement felt like a dream come true after years of console makers refusing to play nice. But it isn't a dream, because Sony continues to flip the bird to its competitors and Fortnite players on the PS4 are being left out in the cold, unable to play with Xbox or Switch gamers.

Fortnite Battle Royale is the latest video game to have cross-platform play among some devices but just can't link PlayStation and Xbox players. Funny how that keeps happening.

Oops, it looks like for a brief few hours PS4 and Xbox One cross-play was available in Fortnite. Now, Fortnite developer Epic Games says that feature was actually a bug, which the studio is referring to as a "configuration issue" that it says it has fixed.

In what is becoming an ongoing thorn in the side of PlayStation PR, the Ark: Survival Evolved developers have revealed that they have gotten cross-play working internally for the survival dinosaur sandbox - but Sony won't let them roll the feature out officially.

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.

Capcom have lifted the lid on the second phase of the Street Fighter 5 beta, and after the shenanigans and failures of their initial efforts it looks like they're ready to give the PC, cross-play, and a whole lot of players a crack.