It’s no secret that the reason cross-platform play wasn’t a bigger thing last generation was because of Sony. With a comfortable lead the the console sales race, they probably didn’t see much need for it. But we didn’t know just how against it they were until today, when more documents leaked from the ongoing legal battle between Epic and Apple, as reported by The Verge.

Players were unhappy with Sony’s decision after they blocked cross-platform play on Minecraft and Rocket League despite buy-ins from Microsoft and Nintendo, but what really set things off was their decision to block cross-platform play for Fortnite in 2018. Now, these documents confirm what most of us already know. Sony blocked cross-platform play because they thought it would make them less money.

In the months leading up to Sony’s decision, Fortnite developer Epic Games had been pleading with Sony to allow cross-platform play on the title. Epic, however, knew that cross-platform play was an inevitability. “I can’t think of a scenario where Epic doesn’t get what we want – that possibility went out the door when Fortnite became the biggest game on PlayStation,” said Joe Kreiner, Epic’s vice president of business development.

And it wasn’t like Epic wasn’t trying. There was plenty they were offering to sweeten the pot for Sony. Kreiner proposed, “We announce crossplay in conjunction with Sony. Epic goes out of its way to make Sony look like heroes.” Epic also offered to brand its E3 presence with PlayStation or add characters that would be exclusive to PlayStation Plus subscribers. “Let’s make this a huge win for us all. Epic’s not changing it’s mind on the issue, so let’s just agree on it now,” said Kreiner.

Sony refused. “As you know, many companies are exploring this idea and not a single one can explain how cross-console play improves the PlayStation business,” said Gio Corsi, who was Sony’s senior director of developer relations at the time.

In April of 2019, Sony proposed a system that would allow cross-platform play but force publishers to pay Sony royalties whenever PlayStation players contributed more than a certain percentage to the revenue of a cross-platform game to “offset the reduction in revenue” Sony would experience. There’s no word on whether Microsoft and Nintendo have similar arrangements or if this system is currently in place at Sony.

While Sony’s position is bad for players, it isn’t surprising. This reports just confirms what many of us already suspected. Cross-platform play should be the standard in multi-platform titles. Hopefully, as time goes on, it will be.

Companies conduct internal reviews all the time, whether it’s for one of their products or one of their competitors. Most of the time, however, folks outside of those companies never see them. The ongoing legal fight between Apple and Epic has been dragging a lot of things into the light, though, and the latest juicy tidbit of information concerns the Xbox Portfolio Team’s internal review of The Last of Us Part 2, which was leaked along with an internal document. The review was posted on RestEra.

Generally, the review is very positive, much like ours was. The Last of Us Part 2 is described as the kind of experience narrative-based games “should be aspiring to accomplish with their character dialogue, presentation, and voice acting.” It’s not a completely glowing review, though. The Portfolio Team had serious criticisms of The Last of Us Part 2‘s combat: “Naughty Dog still can’t seem to make decent gun combat in any of their games, and this is no exception. Luckily for them it fits in with the game’s theme and pushes the player towards using stealth head-on.”

That line will probably get the most attention, but game feel is an incredibly personal thing, so it’s hard to blame the Portfolio Team for feeling that way, especially since they admit that the gunplay works in the context of what The Last of Us Part 2 is trying to do. Ultimately, however, they conclude that it raised the bar and “not every team has the talent or money to produce [a game like it],” admitting that they “still find ourselves thinking about its characters and stories even after finishing the playthrough.”

Bringing The Division 2 exclusively to the Epic Games Store is a shocker on Ubisoft’s part, but there is more to come. In the announcement that they made regarding the game’s exclusivity to Epic’s storefront, they also confirmed that they will be bringing further PC games to the platform going forward.

Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney said, “As long-time fans and partners of Ubisoft, we’re thrilled to bring a range of awesome Ubisoft games to the Epic Games store. We aim to provide the most publisher-friendly store, providing direct access to customers and an 88 per cent revenue split, enabling game creators to further reinvest in building great games.”

Ubisoft’s VP of partnerships Chris Early added, “We entrust Epic to deliver a smooth journey for our fans, from preordering the game and enjoying our Beta to the launch of Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 on March 15. Epic continues to disrupt the video game industry, and their third party digital distribution model is the latest example, and something Ubisoft wants to support.”

Now, the important thing to note here is that Epic Games Store exclusivity isn’t mentioned in terms of the other games. While we know that The Division 2 will be exclusive to the store, there is nothing in the press release that necessarily indicates or implies that future Ubisoft games may be exclusive to Epic’s launcher too. For now, those other titles still have store pages on Steam, so we can assume that they may come to Steam, too.

The other important thing the press release specifies is that these other games will be “in the coming year”. This means that Ubisoft’s upcoming games are the ones that may move over to the Epic Games Store (though nothing is really stopping them from putting older hits, such as Rainbow Six Siege, on the service either).

In any case, as I said earlier, this is a major coup for Epic. If they can keep Ubisoft’s games exclusive to their launcher on PC, they’re going to attract a lot of users very fast.

Fortnite’s iOS debut, where the game is now available for everyone to download and play, has apparently been a huge success. According to mobile app analysis firm Sensor Tower, Fortnite’s iOS version is now making over $1.8 million every day, ever since the game’s public launch.

That’s a ridiculous amount of money—seven day spending for Fortnite is at $6.4 million, which, to put it into context, is more than the money spent on Candy Crush Saga in the same period ($5.8 million), or Clash of Clans ($4.1 million), or Pokemon GO ($2.7 million). Epic has really hit it big with Fortnite.

The best part is, there are still multiple avenues left for the game to grow—it still needs to come out on Android (where it is bound to do even better, given Android’s exponentially larger install base), and a Switch release of the game has also been floated (where, as the first major battle royale game, it could find a major audience). Epic truly struck gold with Fortnite. It is available now on Xbox One, PS4, iOS, and PC.

We’ve heard multiple times that adding cross platform play between the consoles is trivial, and that the only hold up is platform holders (mostly Sony) preventing developers from implementing it. This was actually demonstrated to hilarious effect last year, when Epic accidentally enabled full cross platform play between PS4, Xbox One, and PC in Fortnite (something they would go on to remove later, of course).

Now, cross platform play has returned to Fortnite again- the newest update for the game has reportedly enabled full cross platform play between PC, PS4, and Xbox One for a third time. I don’t understand how this keeps happening, but I find it hilarious (and I’m glad that it does keep happening, it keeps the issue in the news, and the pressure on Sony).

Of course, as always happens, this will probably be removed from the game pretty soon, since officially, Sony still doesn’t allow it. Savor these brief moments of online console gaming without walls before they are taken away from you.

[Reddit]

Epic Games, in a misguided move, decided to sue a young, 14 year old boy who was found cheating in their popular multiplayer game Fortnite; the boy had been using popular cheating software to grief other players, and generally make life difficult and unpleasant for them.

Rather than doing the smart thing and going after the makers and sellers of that software, however, Epic decided to sue a 14 year old boy. And his mother was going to have none of that. In a sharply worded letter, his mother, she called out Epic’s fallacious reasoning, noting that they were just trying to make an example of a young boy, and also, by openly revealing his name, had violated all sorts of privacy laws.

It’s a really sharp, interesting letter- and it makes it seem like Epic really won’t have a case should this actually get to court. You can check it out below.

Nintendo’s Switch has just taken a major step in being appealing as a platform for third parties to support and develop for- it now has full Unreal Engine 4 support and compatibility. The system has actually supported Unreal Engine in a semi final state since February, but now, the Switch supports the popular engine in its entirety.

Update 4.16 is what brings full Switch compatibility to the table. To gain access to these tools, you need to first register as a Nintendo licensed developer, and sign an NDA with Epic. The actual porting process is reportedly easy- so hopefully this spurs developers into bringing more games to the system now.

Hopefully, the end result is that there are more third party games for the system. Unreal Engine is highly scalable, so even with the Switch’s reduced hardware resources over the PS4 and Xbox One, it should be reasonably easy to get some games working on the system. It should definitely be easier to get them running on the Switch than it would have been for Wii or Wii U, that’s for sure.

[Epic]

Epic Games will be holding the open beta for Paragon, their MOBA/shooter hybrid, next week on the PlayStation 4 and PC, they announced today. The beta will be open from Thursday, May 26 through to Monday, May 30, which is more than enough time to get a feel for the game. As of right now, it is unknown whether any progress made during the open beta will carry on over into the full game, once it does launch.

Paragon is currently available to play for PC players, albeit in an Early Access state- you need to pay an Early Access fee, but after that, you get all heroes for free, and all microtransactions are only for cosmetic items and skins. Monetization options for the beta are not yet known fully.

To participate, you will need to register by Wednesday, May 25, so you should get on that now. Also, you can check out the announcement video for the open beta for yourself below.

Epic Games’ Paragon is a free to play shooter/MOBA, making their newest title unlike anything else that the studio that brought us Gears of War and Unreal Tournament has done before. The game is available now in Early Access on Steam, as well as on PlayStation 4; and so far, the official line has been that the game will remain console exclusive to the PlayStation 4.

However, according to something that was noticed in Epic’s presentation on Paragon for GDC 2016, that last bit might not actually be true- the presentation, which got very technical, at one point discussed parallelizing the game’s renderer. Which is all well and good, but the the parallel command list generation and translation includes Xbox One among the list of platforms- implying that the game has, at least, been programmed taking the Xbox One into account, too.

If this is true, then I wonder exactly when the Xbox One version of the game might launch.

We also learned that the PS4 version of the game will be running at 900p- this is a shame, especially since PS4 games generally do manage to hit 1080p resolution, rather than the contrived 900p solution that is necessary on weaker systems. But with the game looking as gorgeous as it does, it is probably too taxing even for PS4’s hardware for it to run properly.

Paragon is available now on PS4 and PC.

Epic’s next game is like nothing that they have been known for before- the developer, most famous for the Unreal Tournament and Gears of War games, will be next launching a hybrid MOBA/shooter. The game is called Paragon, and it will be available for PC and PS4 players in Early Access starting March 18.

Players, however, can already purchase Early Access to the game by purchasing Early Access Founder Packs. These packs can be bought from http://www.paragon.com, or by heading on over to the PlayStation Store, for PS4 players.

Epic also shared a brand new trailer for the game ahead of its Early Access launch- you can check it out for yourself below.

Paragon will be launching on PC and PlayStation 4. It is going to be console exclusive to the PS4 for the foreseeable future, and it will try to appeal to gamers beyond the traditional MOBA crowd with its hybrid take on the genre.