While Nintendo is reportedly interested in cross-platform play with other consoles, Microsoft is apparently interested in having cross-platform play between the PC and Xbox One. Speaking to Aus Gamers, corporate VP of Microsoft Games Studios Phil Spencer talked about a “connected ecosystem” among multiple devices but started off by saying, “I’m not allowed to leak things.”
“But I think what you’re talking about makes a lot of sense. Now, you have differences in Windows gaming and console gaming around control and input…in fact if you go back to Shadow Run on Xbox 360 – something I worked on – we had PC players playing against Xbox 360 customers. We didn’t have tremendous success with that, but we learnt a lot from it.
“And then earlier this year we released Skulls of the Shogun, which was a game we launched on all three platforms on the same day, and you could start on one platform and then save the game to the Cloud and play across any of the screens and progress. And then Halo: Spartan Assault has some links between Halo 4 and Spartan Assault, even though they’re very different games.
“This connected ecosystem across all the different devices is definitely where I think the future of gaming is going. You don’t have to do it as a developer, but you have the capability and I think a system like Xbox Live across all those screens where you know who someone is and who their friends are, what their Achievements are and their progression is really critical to that.”
He doesn’t outright confirm anything or even point in that direction but there does seem to be some kind of plan towards catering to interaction of some kind between multiple platforms. We’ll have to wait and watch before something concrete materializes.