Cross-play has, much to the delight of a large number of people, been growing in prevalence in recent months, and this latest development might be one of its biggest steps forward yet. A new update released for the Steam Beta suggests that built in cross-play functionality for the Xbox One has been added into the client’s system files.
As spotted by a user on ResetEra, one of the files in the Steam Open Source Multiplayer Matchmaking files bear mention of “pairing” with Xbox games. Several Xbox One titles (and PS4 titles as well, for that mater) already allow cross-platform play for PC games- this, however, is different because it’s built right into Steam itself as an open source feature, which opens up possibilities for the same even further.
This isn’t concrete by any means, but the existence of these files is certainly interesting, and might suggest good things for the future. For now, it’s best to take this with a grain of salt. That said, it’s been a good few days as far as pushing cross-play forward in the industry is concerned- recently, Epic Games released its cross-play API to developers for free. Read more on that through here.
