Cross-platform play has become an increasingly pertinent topic in the industry over the last year or so. After stubbornly refusing to budge on their stance, when Sony recently opened the gates for cross-play on PS4 and allowed the same to be enabled for Fortnite, possibilities were opened up for large number of games and developers. Titles from Dragon Quest Builders 2 to Rocket League and many, many more have all been exploring cross-platform play opportunities.
Keeping that in mind, it should go without saying that cross-play is only going to become more and more common as time goes on. Will it, however, be a defining feature for next-gen consoles? Will the PS5 and the Xbox Scarlett – or whatever Microsoft chooses to call the next Xbox – feature full and proper functionalities for cross-platform play? Recently, we sent across some of our questions to Avalanche Studios as we got around to discussing their upcoming open world shooter, Generation Zero, and after posing questions to Product Owner Paul Keslin about the game itself, our conversation eventually turned to next-gen, as it often does.
The possibilities about cross-play was one of the things we quizzed him on, and when we asked him whether it would be a major feature in the PS5 and the Xbox Scarlett, he said, “With the recent trends we’ve seen, we would not exclude it.”
“New technology is always exciting to work with, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds in store, both for players and developers,” Keslin said further when asked about his expectations from next-gen consoles.
Not only has cross-play been becoming more demanded and more popular, recent events, such as Epic beginning to distribute its cross-platform API to developers for free, also show that there’s bound to be a lot of growth in this area.
Generation Zero is slated for PS4, Xbox One, and PC in 2019.