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Sony Is 'Confident' It'll Find an Acceptable Cross-Play Solution
Will players accept anything short of full cross-play?
PlayStation 4 owners who were left unimpressed with Sony's first response to the ongoing cross-play controversy may be a little more encouraged by its most recent update on the matter.
Speaking with Eurogamer at the Gamelab conference today, Sony executive Shawn Layden denied allegations that it wasn't listening to the growing anger from its players:
"We're hearing it. We're looking at a lot of the possibilities," said Layden. "You can imagine that the circumstances around that affect a lot more than just one game. I'm confident we'll get to a solution which will be understood and accepted by our gaming community, while at the same time supporting our business."
Existing Epic Games account on PS4 can't be logged into on Switch, image via Twitter user GreedyEars.
It's not exactly a confirmation that Sony is going to fix the problem as gamers see it, but it at least shows more understanding than Sony's initial response, which only said it was "open to hearing" from the PlayStation community before plugging the PlayStation Network's 80 million monthly active users.
Nintendo and Microsoft responded by releasing a trailer promoting Minecraft cross-play between Switch and Xbox One. Nintendo America president, Reggie Fils-Aime said Sony's decisions were its own to make, but that Nintendo believes in "being both developer-forward and fan-forward."
Meanwhile, former Sony Online Entertainment head John Smedley recently said Sony won't allow cross-play because of "money." Elaborating, Smedley wrote that Sony didn't like the idea of a customer buying "something on an Xbox and it being used on a PlayStation."
Sony and Xbox executives were debating cross-play's merits (or perceived lack thereof) all the way back during E3 2017. However, the issue really heated up when Fortnite launched on Switch earlier this month with cross-play and account carryover support for other platforms – just not PlayStation 4.
Nick Santangelo is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. He loves video games and sports, but not sports video games. Follow him on Twitter.