http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/03/xbox-playstation-cross-play Should be interesting to see how this plays out.
I never thought I'd see the day. Doesn't mean anything unless Sony jumps in though. While cross platform between Xbox and PC is cool, that sort of thing has been done before. I want to play with my friends on PlayStation from my Xbox. That would be truly impressive.
If they get to work now this could be just in to feature it in Madden 17 and 2k17. But what incentive does Sony have to jump on board and make it happen?
Seems like an inevitable and unavoidable event, much like apple and windows, as users and populations no longer accepting incompatibility issues that prevent getting together. If there is a trend that goes beyond all worldly objects like sofas and refridgerators being networked, which is a huge trend, it's all worldly objects, even those competing with each other, interacting to bring everything together.
Sony would not gain much from this. I believe more people own PS units and that gives a lot more incentive for people to buy to play with their friends. If cross-network play takes off then they could potentially lose sales and it just becomes an exclusive game catalog war. Consumer backlash will make it all but impossible to stop this movement though, smart move by Microsoft. This would never work with shooters though, at least not with PC players involved.
In the past, Sony has generally been pretty open to this. There are a few games that allow cross network play on PS and non-PS devices (PC, Smartphones, Nintendo platforms). Comments from developers on games that tried this in the past implied Sony/Nintendo were always OK with it (devs just have to use their own services to handle it), but MS never supported it. I'm very pleasantly surprised to see that changing (more kudos to Phil Spencer and his good work at Xbox). Having said all that, that was then and this is now.
Would be great if it's true, but knowing MS, I'm cautiously skeptical. Sony has had PS/PC cross play since PS2. I don't recall any Xbox games being cross play with PC. They can give us the PR lip like they always do, but is it under their conditions or is it a truly free cross play ecosystem with no strings attached? Going to wait for the small fine print details to emerge. Btw, is this even possible? How would different people who have the same screen names on both systems work out? Gotta love how some revisionist historians push agendas on this forum.
Shouldn't be too much of a technical problem to handle users with the same screen names. Presumably they have internal ids unique to each "network," and that's all the game would really need I'd think to differentiate the players. For display purposes, they could append "XBL" or "PSN" if it was that big of a deal. I'd think those issues could exist with the current cross-platform games (though not sure how they all handle it exactly). Though I'm reminded that Sony uses the PSN name as a unique id IIRC, which is partially why you can't change it. Still don't think that would be a problem, though I'm just reminded of how dumb that was.
Sony aint doing it. They scared I suppose of doing this. First, they know they can't compete with Nintendo on exclusives. And Xbox is more powerful system than PlayStation. Sony knows that they would lose a lot of business because their system isn't unique enough, and people would flock to either Nintendo or xbox.
To be fair, Sony offered to do cross-platform play first. At the time they were trying to get PSN established, and MS was the clear leader (especially when Xbox Live subscribers are considered) -- they then stated absolutely not and that Xbox Live is a closed architecture service. Now that Sony has the lead they have no reason to "help" Microsoft. They're basically just following MS's lead at this point. MS doesn't see Nintendo as a threat, and since they're already behind significantly in this generation, allowing Xbox players to play against PSN players can only benefit them. Additionally this would allow XBL players a chance to play with their friends on PSN, yet have a much more stable network (and one where they won't get their cc stolen once a year), this would again only serve to hurt Sony. At the end of the day it's all about money homie, and Microsoft certainly isn't innocent though they look like the good guys here.
Microsoft has stated on many occasions that they'd be more than happy to do it - and their "play anywhere" Minecraft is proof of that. Sony, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with it.
That was a different scenario as their systems were different platform architectures - it would have required a huge investment to do so. Now that both Xbox One and PS4 are x86, it is a much easier job.
This is fair, but the point stands: Microsoft had market lead, Sony offered cross-platform play, Microsoft said 'piss off'. Sony now has market lead, Microsoft offered cross-platform play, Sony said 'piss off'.
If they thought that they were the better system, why wouldn't they do it. Xbox has no creativity with games and their whole stick in integration with Windows and power. Their games are a mindnumbing array of first person bloodbath shooters. Sony has better titles than Xbox, but there system isn't as powerful. Xbox would have an integration advantage and a hardware advantage and even Xbox live is better than sony. Sony's only advantage to Xbox is their games are better.
