After months of wrangling, Sony finally relents. A crossplay beta between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is coming to Fortnite. The boundaries between platforms are thus falling.
Is this official? Yes, Sony announced it through their blog. Sony states that they have thought it over carefully and have now decided to take this step.
The gaming community in some games has developed over 24 years so that they now consider this the right step. Cross-platform experiences bring significant value to all games.
This is a major directional change for Sony, and they plan this process company-wide.
This likely means: Fortnite is just the beginning. Crossplay could soon be available for all games.
Open beta for Fortnite starts today
What exactly is happening? Today an open beta for crossplay in Fortnite starts, allowing players on all platforms to play together and share their progress. This means: Players can play with and against each other using the same account on any platform.
This applies to
- PS4
- Nintendo Switch
- Android
- iOS
- Xbox One
- Microsoft Windows
- and Mac.
What’s behind it: This beta for Fortnite is apparently intended as an important step and test. If it succeeds, crossplay could come everywhere.
That would allow players on PS4 to play with or against those on all platforms. That was previously not possible. While PS4 players could play with PC and mobile gamers, they could not play with players on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Here, Sony steadfastly resisted for months.
As the market leader, Sony kept their platforms closed to the direct competitors from Microsoft and Switch. Anyone who wanted to play with PS4 players on the consoles needed a PS4 themselves.
Fans react in disbelief
This is how fans are reacting: Fans are visibly surprised by this development. A first tweet has already received over 10,800 likes on Twitter after 20 minutes. Players are posting things like “They finally did it.”
The surprising thing is that the pressure had actually eased in recent weeks. In the meantime, there were actual campaigns from gaming magazines and fans to get Sony to budge.
Microsoft and Nintendo had also launched advertising campaigns emphasizing their collaboration. This too seemed targeted at Sony.
This movement has been ongoing for some time, but with the incredible popularity of Fortnite, it intensified. Epic has tried to place itself at the forefront of a “crossplay platform” movement. Apparently, they have succeeded.
A historic moment
Milestone in gaming: The softening of the boundaries between PlayStation 4 and other consoles has been demanded by gamers, publishers, and gaming sites for months. Apparently, the pressure was now sufficient for Sony to take this historic step.
Previously, Fortnite players who had linked their account with PlayStation 4 could not even play with the same account on Nintendo Switch or Xbox One. They had to create a separate account. This brought Sony severe criticism in June.
Crossplay has also been a recurring topic in other games such as Destiny or World of Tanks. Developers said it was not a technical problem. However, the willingness of platform owners, namely Sony and Microsoft, had been lacking for years.
After Microsoft relented a year ago, only Sony had stubbornly refused until just a few hours ago to open their consoles to other platforms.
That is likely coming to an end now.
Interesting: This opens new doors. For example, Final Fantasy XIV could finally come to Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. Square Enix had made this dependent on Sony relenting and announced that they were making steady progress in discussions.
