NEW YORK, Oct 3 ― A PlayStation 4 cross-play programme has moved out of its beta stage, according to Wired magazine, with this month’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare the first to implement the feature at launch.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is to be the first, or among the first, of a new wave of video games offering cross-play between the PlayStation 4 and other gaming platforms upon release rather than post-launch.
Cross-play, or cross-platform play, allows players on different devices to play together.
Console companies PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo have historically kept their communities separate, even where the same multiplayer games have released across several different consoles.
For instance, having accumulated more players than its rivals during the current console generation, PlayStation was reticent to allow cross-play between its community and those of traditional rivals.
Yet consumer expectations have changed as mobile games demonstrate cross-play across iOS and Android.
Meanwhile, industry-standard game development suites made the process relatively simple.
Nintendo and Microsoft’s Xbox were able to take advantage of PlayStation’s hesitation by collaborating over console, computer and mobile cross-platform multiplayer for the Microsoft-owned phenomenon Minecraft.
Similarly, the incredible success of Fortnite convinced PlayStation to allow cross-play with the rest of the game’s mobile, computer, and console community.
Now, at the close of a cloud gaming article informed by Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan, Wired magazine notes that “while [SIE]’s not announcing the news explicitly, the PS4’s cross-play efforts have officially moved out of the beta stage.”
This means that the PlayStation 4 “can support cross-play on any titles that studios provide the functionality for”, with October 25th’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare perhaps the first big release to make use of it “at launch” (though the developer of May 2019’s Dauntless may disagree).
It indicates that SIE is recognising the importance of platform-agnostic multiplayer sessions to its customers, perhaps an inevitable reality as cloud gaming takes off. — AFP-Relaxnews
