Last September, Sony finally relented in the face of intense fan and publisher pressure and allowed Fortnite to turn on crossplay between the PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Oddly, Sony insisted PS4 crossplay was in “beta,” and has since been very choosy about which games get to add the feature. Some like Rocket League, Dauntless, and the upcoming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare have received the go ahead, while others, like the vehicular combat game War Thunder, have still not added the feature.
Well, apparently PS4 games with full crossplay aren’t going to be such a rare species going forward. Buried at the bottom of a recent Wired article about the recently-revealed changes to PlayStation Now, is mention that the somewhat-arbitrary “beta” label has now been removed from PS4 crossplay. Sony hasn’t made a big official announcement of this, but apparently Wired got their info directly from Sony and SIE Interactive president and CEO Jim Ryan.
What this means, is that basically any game on PS4 can now implement crossplay whenever they want, without having to get special permission. According to Ryan, crossplay, along with the PS Now changes, are part of an initiative to keep the PlayStation brand competitive as gaming rapidly embraces steaming tech and the lines between platforms becomes blurrier…
The track record of the incumbent platform winning the next time around is not a great one. So the major thrust of my executive energy is to avoid complacency.
Of course, as we revealed in our recent interview with War Thunder developer Gaijin, Sony may still be imposing some rules on those who want to do crossplay on PS4. Whether we suddenly see a crush of PS4 games with crossplay remains to be seen, but I imagine going forward most major multiplatform games like Modern Warfare will have it.
What do you think, PS4 owners? Happy to finally get to join the crossplay party?
