Sony Caves: The PS4 Will Soon Begin Supporting Cross-Console Play

Back in June, we talked about a fun little bit of trolling that Xbox and Nintendo teamed up for at the expense of Sony and its PlayStation 4. At issue was Sony's longstanding stance against inter-console play for multiplayer games that would otherwise allow for it, whereas Xbox and Nintendo players all over the world were happily playing MineCraft and Fortnite against one another. The end result of Sony's stance has been both a decent level of frustration by gamers that expect modernity in their console's features, and several YouTube videos and Twitter exchanges between Xbox and Nintendo highlighting that their own consoles had inter-console functionality. In that post, we said it was an open suggestion whether or not this public ribbing would change Sony's stance on the subject.

Narrator: it changed Sony's stance on the subject.

After what it calls "a thorough analysis of the business mechanics required," Sony announced on Wednesday the first crack in the PlayStation Network's walled garden approach to cross-console functionality. Starting today, Fortnite on the PS4 will allow for "cross-platform gameplay, progression, and commerce" with versions on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One (in addition to the Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac platforms where such support was already integrated).

By all accounts, the thorough analysis mostly consisted of high level executives sitting around a table, asking one another if the Playstation should finally support inter-console play, and then sort of staring blankly at one another for days on end until one of them quietly muttered, "Yes?" And this isn't the account of pissed off gamers without an understanding of how this works on the backend. Rather, publishers and developers have basically been screaming at Sony about this for several years now.

Sony has kept the PlayStation Network stubbornly closed off from other consoles' online platforms, despite complaints from multiple game developers that Sony's policy was the only thing stopping them from adding such support to their games.

Things started coming to a head earlier this year, when Fortnite players found that merely linking their game accounts to the PS4 version of the game locked them out from using that same account on the Nintendo Switch version. More recently, Bethesda issued what it called a "non-negotiable" demand that any pending console version of its Elder Scrolls Legends card game must have full cross-console support.

So, while Sony can't credibly take credit for listening to fans, it can be said to have happened indirectly, with developers being the ones wanting to bring these features to their customers, and then pushing and threatening Sony over it. Now, of course, Sony will want platitudes for giving its customers what they've wanted for two or so years, but it likely won't get them.

By stubbornly choosing protectionism in the form of a walled garden, Sony has made even its eventual good moves come without reward.