Just a few days ago, Sony announced cross-play support between PlayStation 4 and other gaming consoles. The company had been opposed to this for a long time, which is why it was so surprising to see this feature come to PlayStation 4. Fortunately, Sony had a change of heart, and gamers from all around the world were excited to hear the big news.
While this move was welcomed by the gaming community, many gamers have been wondering what exactly happened. PlayStation’s Chairmen and Worldwide Studios boss, Shawn Layden, has recently explained what made Sony bring this decision.
Sony’s explanation
According to Layden, Sony had a lot of work to do before enabling the cross-play feature. It was more than just flipping a switch, and the PlayStation 4 manufacturer had to make sure this feature was supported from a technical standpoint.
The PlayStation boss said that the company knew gamers wanted this feature, but making it work wasn’t so simple. “We want to be able to deliver that in the best way possible,” Layden said. “Now, enabling cross-play isn’t just about flipping a switch and ‘there you go’. It’s a very multi-dimensional kind of attribute or feature.”
“So we had to look at it from a technical point of view, we have to work with our partners from a business point of view, we have to make sure that if we enable this, do we have the right customer service support, do we have the right messaging out there, do we have all these different things that you have to get in line. It’s rather ordinal – they have to go in a certain order to get them all set up.”
Fortnite Battle Royale did initially support the cross-play feature between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. However, Epic Games had to disable it when Sony told them to do so. Layden said that it took longer than expected to turn this feature back on, but it has eventually happened.
It appears that the cross-play feature has been successful so far. Even though it’s still in a beta phase, it has worked perfectly. Howeverm Sony will keep an eye on eventual issues and try to fix them.