The feud between who has the best console rages on but the divide may be being healed soon by a potential cross play between the two console giants. This comes from Tim Sweeney who is the head of Fortnite at Epic Games. He said that it is in the gaming industry’s best interest to allow players on separate platforms to play together. He also said that this move would be “Inevitable”. He also claimed it was “the next logical step”. Whether or not Sony or Microsoft would be up for this move.
He backed up this claims by referencing Metcalfe’s law. Metcalfe’s law states that the effect of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system. This simply means the value of a shared experience is related to the amount of people who can connect to it.
GI.biz have this to say about the shared experience in gaming. “Games have become social experiences in the same way that Facebook or Twitter have, and these experiences only really make sense if gamers can communicate with all of their friends.”
“For Sony and Microsoft to support their customers well they have to be open to all their customer’s friends–their real world friends–otherwise they’re breaking up real-world social groups,” he said. “Like kids in school have their friends, and do you expect this platform schism to divide them into two separate groups that can’t play together? No. It’s got to come together now. That one remaining barrier will inevitably come down.”
Epic actually had cross play turned on for their zombies horde mode called ‘Fortnite: Save the world’. However this was turned off and blamed on an error. This shows that it is possible to do it but simply that the big players in the game do not want to do it.
Earlier this month, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said he wants to see cross-play support between PS4 and Xbox One added for Fortnite–and presumably other games.
Microsoft has famously been open to cross-play support in recent years. Rocket League is set to work across Xbox One, Switch, and PC, while the developer of Minecraft (which Microsoft owns) is also open to cross-play between Xbox One and PS4. For its part, Sony has not seemed eager to allow cross-play.
There are games which are set to be cross play between PC, xbox and Switch. These include Rocket League and also Minecraft. Microsoft seem fairly open to the idea of cross play where Sony seem to be against the idea.
Phil Spencer who is Xbox boss stated that he would want to see cross play between the two consoles for Fortnite. If this became a reality we hope that other games would follow suit.
What do you think to the idea of cross play? Good? Bad? Meh?
Let us know!