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Microsoft And Nintendo Have Locked Sony Into A No-Win Cross Play Trap

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Epic

Yesterday, a new ad debuted for Minecraft that not only showed cross-play for the game between Switch and Xbox, but downright shouted its virtues from the rooftops. The most iconic image from the trailer comes via a screengrab that shows Xbox on the left, Switch on the right with text that says “Survive together.”

It’s the most direct shot at Sony yet, without actually being a direct shot, since the PS4 isn’t mentioned by name. As console market leader, Sony has rejected cross-play for years, but recently the controversy was rekindled once again once players realized they couldn’t use any PS4-linked Fortnite account on the Switch, a step beyond a typical lack of cross-play.

While Epic has groaned about this a bit, today is also the day that Sony debuted a Fortnite-bundled PS4, complete with an exclusive Sony skin, so it seems pretty clear why Epic isn’t taking things a step further. They don’t want to upset their valued partner.

But Fortnite is far from the only game that inspires anger about a lack of Sony cross-play. There’s Minecraft and Rocket League, past controversies Sony has ducked, and of course pretty much any online game from Call of Duty to Destiny to Battlefield, has fans that wish they could play with friends on other consoles, or account share between them.

Microsoft and Nintendo clearly smell weakness here. It’s one thing to advertise cross-play, but they’re doing it in a way that piles shade on top of Sony, and PlayStation is sort of stuck.

With the Fortnite issue, things have gotten especially bad. A lack of cross-play is one thing, but account locking is another, and it’s actually a reason to actively avoid PlayStation in the future, if you believe whatever game you’re playing is a candidate for cross-play or account sharing. It’s already made many players regret ever linking their Fortnite account to PS4, so why would they do that again if this is going to be Sony’s position on all titles?

Sony’s trapped now.

They can continue to flat-out ignore the issue, which they’re currently doing, but it’s never going to stop coming up because there are more and more games getting cross-play these days, and fans will get more and more mad with each new instance.

They can come up with reasons as to why they’re not going to do it, but if it’s anything like past rationale given (protecting children from online spaces they can’t control), everyone is going to see it as the PR BS that it is, as everyone knows it’s primarily about one thing, money.

They can change their minds, which is obviously the end result everyone is looking for, but they have already suffered damage to the brand by waiting this long, and it…isn’t actually great for them as market leader, as part of the bonus of having sold 80 million PS4s is that you can effectively demand that players’ friends also buy PS4s to play with them. Cross-play eliminates one of the biggest benefits of having a massive lead like this, which is what Sony is desperately trying to avoid. And again, if they do this for say, Fortnite, they really do have to do it for everything. The floodgates would open.

I don’t know what Sony will do here. My money is on them continuing to put their fingers in their ears until this latest dust-up goes away. Given that this is the gaming industry, some other controversy will erupt soon enough, and that’s probably what they’re banking on. But cross-play as an industry issue is not going away no matter how much Sony wishes it would. Sony can only stand on an island for so long, and the longer they wait to give in to what seems like it’s inevitable, the more people are going to grow to dislike the brand that was supposed to be so “pro-gamer” in the era when they were trashing Microsoft for the Xbox One’s anti-player positions near the launch of this generation.

I was hoping that we’d see something very dramatic happen, like Epic refusing to continue to support Fortnite on PS4 unless cross-play and account sharing was implemented, but it’s hard to see that happening given how close the two companies appear to be. Maybe fan anger will be enough to create change, but so far, I’m not seeing much actual movement. That could change any day now though, so stay tuned.

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