Cross platform play in some capacity or the other has been a thing for over a decade now. But it was only with first Rocket League, then Minecraft, and finally Fortnite, that it became a major consumer expectation across the board. Fortnite, especially, being the most popular game in the world, and available on every platform, really helped push cross platform play, to the extent that it was the first game that Sony, the last holdout in the cross platform play stakes, ended up enabling it for.
Speaking with PCGamesN at HRX, Hi-Rez Studios, the folks who brought us Paladins, games that are available across many platforms and have cross platform play to some degree in all of them, spoke about the cross platform play initiative. General manager Chris Larsson specifically singled Epic Games and Fortnite as being the spark that gave rise to the cross platform play flame.
“Epic kind of did a favour for everyone,” he said. “I don’t think Epic wanted cross-play for its own financial gain. It was really to provide a better experience for its players, and I think that in the industry as a whole, that’s going to be a benefit for everyone. Without Epic, we would not be close to cross-play in its current state. It’s only since Fortnite kind of pushed for cross-play that providers have really started to embrace it.
“If you allow people to move their content freely between different platforms, you could lose some people. But at the same time, you may gain a lot of people, and also goodwill on top of it.”
Hopefully, what Epic Games started continues on with more and more games in the future. Fortnite is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android; Paladins is available on PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC.