Cross platform play has become a huge talking point right now, with even Nintendo being on board. This whole issue started when Microsoft announced that Minecraft across all platforms would become unified, which would mean not only that all players on them would be able to play with each other, but also that all content updates would become unified, and all versions of the game would be getting improvements like better graphics and infinite worlds.
Except it’s not all platforms- Sony and PlayStation are very specifically sitting this out, as they are all cross platform play in general. The reason, according to them, is because they ‘have a responsibility to the children’ playing online on their systems (which makes no sense whatsoever, as Psyonix, the developers of Rocket League, pointed out earlier today).
Xbox head Phil Spencer who also owns Minecraft, also sounded off on Sony’s response to the debacle so far in an interview with Giantbomb. “The door is still open. I would love for players on all platforms to stay connected,” he said, before adding what he thought of Sony’s response. “I will jump on another grenade for this one, but… the fact that somebody would kind of make the assertion that somehow we’re not keeping Minecraft players safe, I found not only from a Microsoft perspective, but a game industry perspective, I don’t know why that has to be the dialog. It doesn’t seem healthy for anyone. And I feel we can always do better with everything we do. I feel great our relationship with Minecraft… I just really found the whole discussion around safety with our game, as if we wouldn’t make it the top priority… frankly, with our parental controls on Xbox Live, and everything else we have done, we have shown that’s extremely important to us as a platform.
“And frankly, if Nintendo is on board… yeah, but the door is open. I’d love all Minecraft players to have the full Minecraft experience, and we take the safety of Xbox Live and of all our players really seriously. It’s incredibly important to our team.”
Everything he said, all of it, is 100% accurate. I am glad more and more people are calling Sony out on this cross platform play thing- I want to see them back off from this frankly regressive stance, and enable the kind of cross platform play that is sure to be the wave of the future.
