Microsoft have made waves recently with their decision to allow for full cross platform play between Xbox Live players, and users of other online networks, such as Steam, Origin, and even PSN and Nintendo Network- but for many large third party games seeking to implement that kind of cross network play, such as Rocket League, there does not seem to have been any movement on that front. The hold up, it appears, seems to be on Sony’s end.
However, in a recent interview with IGN, PlayStation’s Global Sales and Marketing Head Jim Ryan tried to clarify Sony’s stance on the issue, noting that Sony has always espoused cross platform day, and that they would be open to it now as well.
“There’s been a lot of noise about this recently. There were certain statements made at E3. But our position has always been that we’re receptive to this,” he said. “It’s something we’ve been doing for many years now. I think we started with cross-platform initiatives on PS2 in fact, in the early network days of that. There are a number of instances on PS3: when you upgraded from the PS3 to the PS4 generation on GTA V you could take your save cross-platform, we’ve also seen it with Final Fantasy. We’re completely open to this. It’s really down to the developer and publisher of a certain game to come and talk to us and we’re ready to have that conversation.”
Interestingly enough, his examples all seem to refer specifically to cross platform play within the PlayStation ecosystem, and not across networks and platform, of the kind that Microsoft are allowing, and that developers are requesting. Let’s hop the examples were only meant to be illustrative, and that Sony will in fact allow a unified player base for online games to become a reality- it’d be ironic and a bit depressing if after all this time, they turned out to be the reason for something like this not happening.