While Sony allows full cross-platform play in some games on the PS4, such as with Rocket League and Fortnite, they aren’t letting every developer who wants to implement it do it either, unlike Microsoft or Nintendo. We already saw the developers of War Thunder, Gaijin Entertainment, call Sony out on playing favorites with doling out permission for cross-platform play recently. Now, it seems Hi-Rez Studios, the developers of Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale, are joining in, too.
President Stewart Chisam recently posted a tweet calling Sony out on exactly this on Twitter. For people who believe there are no tangible benefits to a feature like that, Chisam also posted several that his company’s games saw once cross-platform play between Xbox One and Switch was implemented, including a reduction in wait times and bad matches for players.
On the whole, I stand with these developers on this issue—cross-platform play is the future, and Sony needs to just stop picking and choosing who it lets implement the feature.
https://twitter.com/schisam/status/1093887667190808576?s=21
Xplay improves match quality in multiplayer games. When we added crossplay between Paladins Xbox and Switch:
>> Wait time reduced 30%
>> Level spread between players down 40%
>> 40% reduction in ELO std deviation per match
>> 80% reduction in "Bad" matches (by our internal defn)— Stewart Chisam (@schisam) February 8, 2019
