In a recent interview with Game Informer, PlayStation executive Shawn Layden (Chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios) said that they are not blocking crossplay for other games as developers like Gaijin Entertainment and Hi-Rez Studios have revealed recently.
People keep saying, “Why doesn’t Sony allow more people to have it?” We’re open for business on this one. All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we’ve learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works. I don’t believe right now there is any gating factor on that. I think they’re open to make proposals, because the Fortnite thing worked pretty well.
However, yet another developer came out to disprove this statement. Yesterday, the CEO of Chucklefish wrote the following post on the ResetEra board.
Hi all,
CEO Of Chucklefish here, we just launched Wargroove with crossplay between PC, Switch and Xbox so I wanted to chime in.
We made many requests for crossplay (both through our account manager and directly with higher-ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen.
From our side, we can *literally* toggle a switch and have it working. Of course policy work might be more complicated for Sony.
Just wanted to provide some balance on the issue and say that it certainly isn't a question of developers having not contacted their account managers or having dropped the ball. We were told no.
Chucklefish recently released Wargroove, which got high praise from Francesco in our review. The game managed to break even in just three days since launching.
Intelligent Systems may have moved away from a certain tactical role-playing experience, but thankfully Chucklefish not only picked up the torch but carried it way further with Wargroove. While the game has been inspired by classic Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, it would be reductive to define Wargroove as a simple spiritual successor. With its huge amount of content, solid mechanics and very high-quality, this is a game that fans of the genre should not pass for any reason.
