Crossplay has been a huge topic of debate recently, as fans want to play video games online with others no matter what system they own the same game on. While Xbox and Nintendo have been supporters of the initiative, Sony has been adamant that they want to keep PS4 multiplayer native to the system.
Recently, Epic Games Fortnite allowed PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Players to cross-play the game online, despite the fact that it was never advertised. It was revealed the ability to do so was actually not intentional and the mistake has since been fixed.
One of the more interesting thing that’s occurred because of the situation has been that Xbox’s Phil Spencer actually liked it.
I would have liked to see them leave it on.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) September 18, 2017
This isn’t the first time that Spencer has voiced in favor of connecting games across multiple platforms. Speaking to Giant Bomb at E3, he responded to Sony’s comments about not getting involved in Minecraft cross play stating that he would love for players to be connected across each platform, simultaneously questioning the reasoning behind Sony’s comments about the safety behind it all.
“The fact that somebody would make an assertion that somehow we’re not keeping Minecraft players safe,” Spencer continued, “I found, not only from a Microsoft perspective but an industry perspective, I don’t know why that has to become the dialogue. Frankly, through our parental controls on Xbox Live and everything else that we’ve done, we’ve shown safety is an incredibly important to us as a platform.”
PlayStation also ruled out cross-platform play with Psyonix Rocket League around the same time, even though the company said it was a feasible task. It should be interesting to see if the decision will have any noticeable effect on PlayStation, especially when its two main competitors are in support of the practice. Again Spencer was in favor of cross-play for the game.
In other Phil Spencer news, the Xbox Boss recently received a big promotion to executive vice president of gaming. The new job will see him report directly to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.