Cross-platform play was great

While I’ve already complained the lack of real technological advances in the previous generation of consolesNot every innovation of the PS4 / Xbox One era had to do with graphics or frame rate. One of the quieter and most forward-looking revelations was the slow adoption of cross-platform gaming, also known as crossplay.

As long as there were video game consoles, it was long believed that they were locked down. That was the Point. You’ve shopped into a closed ecosystem that is completely controlled by the platform owner, and in return for that control, you’ve expected a degree of consistency and quality from the experience.

That was true for Atari, for Nintendo, Sega and later for PlayStation and Xbox. As multiplatform games became more common in the 21st century – or at least multiplatform games of similar design and performance – that assumption looked a bit shaky. When i play FIFA

on my PlayStation and my friend is playing FIFA on his Xbox, and they’re basically the same game, why can’t we play against each other?

The initial defense was fair, of course because. PlayStation players could play against PlayStation players, Xbox people could play Xbox people, and the two of them should never meet because it always has been that way and it would be difficult to change, and they both had their own dedicated multiplayer networks and …

This past generation of consoles has changed. Microsoft eventually saw the possibilities of getting its games out on both Xbox and PC, and found ways for gamers to compete against each other on those two platforms, such as games like Killer instinct and Gears 4.

Sony had meanwhile also investigated the connections between console and PC games with things like Final Fantasy XIVand even earlier that had worked with Valve to get Steam working on the PlayStation 3. something that seemed monumental at the time

but what was going nowhere?

That stuff worked! And if it worked there then … maybe it could work anywhere. And so after a few quiet early years of this past generation of consoles, in which no great progress was made in converting crossplay to crossplay thingIn 2016, Microsoft took things a little more seriously.

Microsoft was the leader in the first place Missile league so work in crossplay MinecraftIn both cases, Nintendo was supported to open the Switch 2017 so that players on Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch can play with each other / against each other.

And where was Sony? At first they dragged their heels. Until June 2018 the PlayStation’s crossplay situation was bad enough that we would blog about it, but the pressure from fans – and the emerging importance of some of the world’s greatest games as cross-platform titles Fourteen days– Forced the company’s hand, and in September 2018 Sony gave in and Allowed crossplay on PS5 for “Select third-party content”.

That was only two years ago and we are still a long way from achieving the ultimate end goal of crossplay, which – for fans at least – would play any multiplatform game they wanted on any system they wanted. But now with all three console platform owners on board, along with Microsoft’s PC efforts and Epic’s cross-platform tools, it seems we can actually see that end goal, not just dream it.

What I love about this advancement is that it is more than just technological. Sure, there is still a lot of work to be done behind the curtain to make games work on completely different consoles in terms of code and networks, but the first confident steps in crossplay also required diplomacy, not an endeavor that usually comes to mind when one comes across it contemplates competing platform holders.

Generations of consoles have long been associated with consoles WarsSo bringing all three companies together in this way could be one of the greatest achievements of the past generation. We hope the effort will continue into the PS5 / XBX era and we’ll all be playing in a couple of years fate and FIFA together, regardless of the box under our television.