It Looks Like PlayStation is Finally Ready to Really Embrace Cross-Play

The days of picking consoles based on where your friends play multiplayer games may be fading further back into the rearview mirror. Efforts have already been underway for several games to have limited or full cross-play across consoles and PC, and now, Sony is saying that all PlayStation games should be able to support cross-play, should developers target it.

In an interview with Wired, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan commented on cross-play while discussing the recent price cut to PlayStation Now. According to Wired, Sony isn't explicitly announcing it, but PlayStation 4 cross-play support has "officially moved out of the beta stage," so any developer or publisher that wants to take advantage of it should be able to.

While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is notably taking advantage of it, other games like Rocket League and Dauntless have had cross-play with other consoles for some time. Other games, like indie Advance Wars successor Wargroove, hit roadblocks in trying to make its game cross-platform compatible. In fact, Sony's stance against cross-platform transfers or multiplayer has been a long-running narrative, with one studio likening the PS4's isolation to the Berlin Wall.

Theoretically, there shouldn't be blockers anymore, but we'll see how developers utilize this in the future. It's also interesting that this is coming on the tail-end of the PlayStation 4's lifespan, as the next PlayStation nears. Ryan's chat with Wired does make it sound like Sony won't be sticking to the old playbook in the next generation though, as it's still aware there's competition from other platforms nipping at its heels this generation.

"The track record of the incumbent platform winning the next time around is not a great one," Ryan says. "So the major thrust of my executive energy is to avoid complacency."

Keep up to date with everything we know about the next PlayStation so far in our guided roundup on the PlayStation 5.