With Nintendo and Microsoft having jumped on the cross-play bandwagon, gamers are still waiting for Sony to allow the feature but recent comments from the gaming giant make it seem like Sony has no plans to introduce the feature.
Although Sony does allow cross-play between its consoles and PC, it will not allow cross-play with rival consoles such as the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One. While Sony has its reasons for saying no, game developer Tim Sweeney of Epic Games believes there’s more to the story.
Sweeney took to Twitter on Tuesday to tweet his thoughts. After celebrating the news that Psyonix Studios and Nintendo would allow cross-play, one user brought up Sony. “Sony appear to be the only ones preventing complete unification, although they are fine with PC+PS4,” the user tweeted. Sweeney responded, “I bet there’s more to this story. Sony has been super cool in supporting our successful PC+PS4 Paragon cross-play efforts.”
During an interview with Eurogamer, Jim Ryan of Sony said one of the reasons they were against cross-play was because they wanted to keep younger gamers safe. “We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe,” he said. “Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it’s something we have to think about very carefully.”
When asked if there was no chance for cross-play, Ryan disagreed but said he didn’t know of any ongoing conversations about the feature. “I don’t think anything is ever a done deal. Anybody who is dogmatic in that manner is typically a fool. That said, to my knowledge, there is no live conversation ongoing at the moment.”
I bet there's more to this story. Sony has been super cool in supporting our successful PC+PS4 Paragon cross-play efforts.
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) June 21, 2017