Image courtesy of Sony
The dream of cross-play, allowing people to play the same game across different platforms, is nearly here. Buried in a Wired interview about Sony’s ongoing flirtation with cloud gaming, there’s a note about how “the PS4’s cross-play efforts have officially moved out of the beta stage,” starting with games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. (Hat tip to IGN for noticing.)Sony did not respond to a request for comment as of this writing, but there’s other noteworthy evidence.Not long after the Wired piece went up, it was announced PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds would begin testing “cross platform play” between Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users.“We are beyond thrilled to unify the two console platforms into one matchmaking pool and are looking forward to your feedback and reports,” read a patch note issued earlier today.That suggests we should be hearing more soon, and while it’s certainly a possibility older games patch in cross-play support, more than likely it’s a trend we’ll see for newer games.No company has dragged their feet on cross-play than Sony. When Microsoft showed interest in adding cross-play, a move meant to cynically poke Sony as much as it was the right thing to do, Sony resisted. But the unexpected explosion of Fortnite, a game that proved hugely popular no matter what platform it was on, started thawing the corporate ice, and soon, a partnership between Microsoft and Nintendo unlocking cross-play for a number of games on both Switch and Xbox, like Fortnite and Rocket League, kept the ball rolling.In 2018, Sony announced it would allow cross-play. In early 2019, it said cross-play was definitely a thing and now the onus was on developers to implement it, which a number of developers actively pushed back on. Hopefully, the wait is over. Now, just add it to Destiny.Follow Patrick on Twitter. If you've know why it's taken so long to get cross-play on PlayStation, drop an email: patrick.klepek@vice.com. He's also available privately on Signal.
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