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Nintendo and Microsoft team up to promote cross-play, while Sony remains silent

219 points by mikece 8y ago

balls187 8y ago
The infuriating issue with Sony's cross play ineptitude is that because I cross-linked a PC Fortnite account with my PS4, I cannot use the same account to play on the Switch.
- sli 8y ago
  Probably worth noting that this is true even if you unlink the account from PSN. Linking the account once blocks that account from other consoles permanently.
  - jsheard 8y ago
    It's especially ridiculous for those who played the Paragon beta on PS4, as their Epic accounts are still blocked from other consoles even though Paragon has been cancelled and shut down.
    - jackewiehose 8y ago
      Do you get a warning when you link your account with Sony? Why are accounts linked to a console at all? That has nothing to do with cross-play...
      - metasaval 8y ago
        No, there is no warning when you link your Epic account to your Sony account, as far as I know. As for why accounts are linked to a console, linking your account means you can have the same friend list across platforms, which makes it easier to play with your friends no matter where you're playing. Also, and maybe more importantly, you have access to all of your cosmetics across platforms.
- donarb 8y ago
  Blame it on Microsoft, :-) http://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-nintendo-switch-ps4-2018-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-nintendo-switch-ps4-...
shmerl 8y ago
They should start promoting Vulkan for developers.
- canardlaquay 8y ago
  How is this related? It doesn't matter which engine is used in general, the only problem here is Sony. It isn't technical. Fortnite proved it when it 'mistakenly' allowed PS4 players to play with Xbox One players due to a 'configuration issue'.
  - skellera 8y ago
    They never claimed it was technical. They pretty much said they’re in the lead so they don’t want to. Microsoft did the same shit last gen. Leaders have no incentive to do it.
  - shmerl 8y ago
    > It isn't technical. Exactly. No Vulkan support is the same problem as not allowing cross play - lock-in in case of MS and Sony. At least Nintendo support Vulkan on Switch: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#submission_310 https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-prod...
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Yeah they do, yet is used as much as GL ES 1.0 was on the PS3. Most Switch games are done in Unity, Unreal, Crysis and a couple of other lesser known middleware engines, taking advantage of NVN.
      - shmerl 8y ago
        I suppose they might use NVM to interface with Nintendo specific hardware, they don't need it for graphics. So if engine developers are smart, they minimize NVM usage to only those corner cases, since there is no need to reinvent the wheel and duplicate work. >yet is used as much as GL ES 1.0 was on the PS3. Any Vulkan based engine can use it. Wasn't there Doom release for Switch?
overcast 8y ago
Sony is the undisputed king of exclusive content. Microsoft really has nothing, and Nintendo lives off of a once per generation Mario/Zelda/Metroid. My guess is that they enjoy their clubhouse, and don't want to invite others to join it.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  Nintendo is definitely the undisputed king of exclusive content. Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world, higher than Star Wars. Mario comes in at number five, putting it above the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, and Call of Duty. We'll see how things shake out, but I would bet money that Nintendo will still be selling Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda games thirty years from now. I have no faith that Sony will even be making video game consoles at that point.
  - overcast 8y ago
    Like I said, beyond the holy Nintendo trinity, Sony has the entire rest of the exclusive IPs.
    - yifanl 8y ago
      As a fairly on-and-off gamer, I can't really name any exclusive IPs from Sony. I know Microsoft has Halo, and Nintendo has enough exclusives to make Smash Bros. I vaguely recall Sony making their own Smash Bros a few years back, but none of the IPs featured in it have had any recent entries, nor are really that prominent.
      - jamesgeck0 8y ago
        While none of them are as popular as Nintendo's main series, Sony does have rather a lot of notable exclusive IP. LittleBigPlanet, Bloodborne, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, The Last of Us, Gravity Rush, PaRappa the Rapper, etc. Halo is popular, but Sony has a much larger portfolio of exclusive IP than Microsoft does right now.
    - 8y ago
smaili 8y ago
If anyone is curious, this was Sony's official response: > We’re always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience. Fortnite is already a huge hit with PS4 fans, offering a true free-to-play experience so gamers can jump in and play online. With 79 million PS4s sold around the world and more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we’ve built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles. We also offer Fortnite cross-play support with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, expanding the opportunity for Fortnite fans on PS4 to play with even more gamers on other platforms.[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44477524 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44477524
- Someone1234 8y ago
  That's a response that lacks a response. They don't address Switch or XBox cross-play.
  - tyfon 8y ago
    It's the response of a dominant player. Microsoft had the exact same stance when they had the 360 while Sony on the struggling PS3 wanted cross play.
- ashleyn 8y ago
  I've been following Sony for twenty years or so. "Interop" is not a word in their vocabulary. There are many innovations such as Minidisc, SACD, and ATRAC that never truly took off because they wanted to run proprietary from end to end and own all the rights. They never took a lesson from why IBM's microchannel bus doomed the PS/2. Proprietary standards hamper adoption and success. Many try to be Apple but only one can end up pulling it off.
niftich 8y ago
The Switch and XBox One aren't really competitors to the same degree as the Xbox and PS4, and the games in this announcement aren't the sorts of games that sell a particular console. Rather, they're the sort of stuff you can sink time into between your purchases of AAA exclusives. Annoucing this cross-play is a cheap win-win for both MS and Nintendo: For Nintendo, it solidifies that in the right context, the ultraportable Switch is a comparable platform to the cabinet-bound boxy consoles that are still current in their generation -- a marketing victory that handily exceeds the reputation of its predecessor, the Wii U. For Microsoft, it legitimizes their cross-play message by spreading beyond platforms that they both happened to own, and makes Sony look bad.
- deleted 8y ago
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- metasaval 8y ago
  I think you're underestimating the popularity of Minecraft and Fortnite. There are absolutely people out there who only play Fortnite and nothing else. But you are right in that the Switch doesn't compete with the XBoX the same way the PS4 does (Nintendo consoles always played by their own rules). But Microsoft has already said that they'd be fine with crossplay with PS4, it's Sony holding up the line. Epic already accidentally (or so they say) enabled XBoX and PS4 crossplay once before for a short amount of time [1], so the work is already done, too. [1] https://kotaku.com/epic-accidentally-allows-xbox-and-ps4-cross-play-on-for-1818518611 https://kotaku.com/epic-accidentally-allows-xbox-and-ps4-cro...
  - cfadvan 8y ago
    Why would a company care about people who only play Fortnite? They’re not going to be buying anything other than those games, and when the fad dies away, they will too. It’s one thing to cater to casual players, who will buy lots of different games, another to Madden/COD players who will buy yearly installments. Pandering to s single fad that will be replaced within a year though is crazy. People will get tired of Battle Royale, just like they did with Hero shooters, and the fads before that.
jetti 8y ago
One of the great things about Rocket League is the cross play. While, as a PS4 owner, I cannot play against those on XBox or Switch, I am able to play against PC players in addition to PS4. It is always nice increasing the player pool. That said, it is really frustrating that Sony is so stubborn on this issue.
- SpliffnCola 8y ago
  I’m excited about the upcoming _true_ cross platform play coming mid July/August. You will be able to create a new in-game gamertag; it will require re-adding friends but I’m really excited to be able to finally play remotely with my friends!
padobson 8y ago
I don't think it's out of line to say Sony understands the platform business better than anyone. And I'm not just talking about console makers, I'm talking about all platforms: iOS, Android, Steam, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc. Sony's first goal every generation since the PSOne has been winning game developers to their side. Game devs like large user bases, but that's only one aspect of why a developer picks a console. Sony's primary focus every generation is to get everything else right: development tools, hardware storage and performance, consistent controller design, software medium, and so on. They've had some misfires here and there (the Cell processor comes to mind), but they typically outperform their competition in all of these categories. I think it's because Sony knows their customer isn't the gamer, it's the game developer. The game developer's customer is the gamer. Again, user base numbers attract developers, but Sony recognizes that user bases are driven by developer support. It's definitely reciprocal, but Sony's dominance comes from understanding that catering to the developer is paramount. That's why they've consistently created an environment that breeds killer apps. I can't think of another platform maker in the last 20+ years who's been better. So after 20 years of building up that kind of leverage with developers, it doesn't make much sense to just give part of it away until game developers make it clear they need it.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  > Sony understands the platform business better than anyone. And I'm not just talking about console makers, I'm talking about all platforms: iOS, Android, Steam, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc. Out of curiosity, seeing as how some of those platforms are the bread and butter of companies that have market caps that far exceed Sony, what leads you to believe that?
  - padobson 8y ago
    I would chalk the market cap differences up to the differences in the industries. Internet search is more than 5 times the size of console gaming, and vastly more profitable. I think a true quantitative comparison would have to account for market size, market share, age of the market, and typical industry profit margins. A qualitative comparison might be more instructive, though. How many truly successful user experiences have been built on top of Facebook? Newsfeed, Messenger, and Ads? Maybe Farmville? On top of Google? Search, Gmail, Analytics and Ads? Less than a handful for both. Playstation, on the other hand, has had thousands of successful user experiences over a twenty year period. Facebook, Google, and others often seem to have an adversarial relationship with their 3rd party developers. I could only imagine what types of amazing experiences we could be enjoying if they adopted the licensing model that's led Sony to dominate its industry for 20 years.
post_break 8y ago
Nintendo has started to brick the game cartridges coming from consoles that were hacked. So you could buy a game second hand that doesn't work. Nintendo isn't in the clear yet.
- e1ven 8y ago
  I’m sure every company has done lots of things various people disapprove of. This is an article about cross-play and your comment isn’t related to that, is it?
  - post_break 8y ago
    Well if you buy a used switch game, that has been banned, you can't cross play online with it. You have no way of knowing if that game has been banned either. So it's related to online play.
- davb 8y ago
  My understanding is that each Switch cartridge has a unique key or certificate. People have begun dumping the cartridge ROMs (including certificate) and sharing these online or burning them to writable carts. Nintendo is blocking these keys from online play. The upset seems to be over the very narrow case where someone dumps a ROM, shares it widely enough that Nintendo blocks it, then sells the genuine progenitor cartridge to an unwitting customer. I can’t see that happening too often, it only affects online play, and it’s the exact same risk someone takes buying a used console (which are frequently blocked from online play for a number of TOS violations). I’m fine with this. While I am generally against DRM and over-reaching copy protection mechanisms, I think this is reasonable. Especially in the context of online play.
- LocalH 8y ago
  They've done no such thing. Blocking online play with the signatures from dumped and pirated carts, maybe. But they haven't actually bricked any systems or carts - "banned from network services" is nowhere near "bricking".
mtgx 8y ago
Sony is missing out on a partnership with Steam, especially if they would just support Vulkan on PS5. The PS5 could also be a "Steam machine".
- codegoblins 8y ago
  Why would sony want to cede their own very profitable digital games storefront to valve?
- elsonrodriguez 8y ago
  Sony had a deal with Valve a while back for Portal 2, don't know what happened to it.
VectorLock 8y ago
Sony is the king of the console heap so they have no reason to allow cross-play. "Everybody is on PS4, so I need to get a PS4 to play with them" is a huge driver of their sales. That is the moat around their lucrative console castle. There is no way they'd allow a bridge to Xbox or Switch like Microsoft and Nintendo push-- it would only weaken their Sony's position and strengthen their competition's. Its shitty but the ball is in their court.
- zeroDivisible 8y ago
  I really would want to see Nintendo Switch to get even more mainstream than it is now. Not that I appreciate their way too (supposedly the anti-piracy / console-locking measures in Switch are first grade?) but this would put pressure on Sony to possibly stop blocking cross-play.
- ageitgey 8y ago
  I think that in any large company in a market leading position with a lot of turnover, it's essentially impossible to convince them to act in their own long-term best interest. Microsoft is acting scrappy right now (because they have to) and Sony is acting like a self-satisfied dinosaur (because no one is going to get promoted for doing anything different). Sony is thinking short term - "If we open up on Fortnite, we'll sell less content now through our digital store". So no one at Sony is willing to fight for this. It won't make any charts go up for the next quarterly earnings. But the long-term view is that they are teaching an entire new generation of gamers that "Playstation is the worst place to play Fortnite - the world's most popular game". That is going to be a disaster the next time new consoles are released - just like how Microsoft made similarly dumb moves when they first launched the XBox One.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    What is the dominant platform for Fortnite? There are 125 million registered users and 3.3 active concurrently but I have yet to see any numbers broken down by platform. If we assume PS4 is not the dominant platform then your assertions might be true, however if PS4 is the dominant platform then they're absurd. Sony is teaching the same lesson as Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Atari. It's best to buy the same console as your friends.
floatingatoll 8y ago
I am so glad Sony doesn’t offer crossplay, especially with PC, for one simple reason: It’s nearly impossible to cheat on a PS4 game, and a console ban costs hundreds of dollars, and that protects me from being exposed to cheating; via save files, via video driver hacks, via ‘I only use it for development’ memory patchers. (Network manipulation cheating still occurs, but that can’t be used without other players reporting you, and is an issue on all platforms.)
- jsheard 8y ago
  Fortnite doesn't have this problem because it only places you in cross-platform games if there are multiple platforms in your party. If you want a guaranteed cheat-free experience you can always play solo or with a same-console party and never see any PC users.
- eropple 8y ago
  Sony happily permits crossplay with those mustachio-curling memory-patching dreaded PC players. Fortnite does allow crossplay between PC and PS4 and Mac and mobile. PC/PS4 crossplay is also available in Rocket League and some other games. The only gate is between PS4/Xbox and PS4/Switch--and both platforms seem very much on par with the PS4 in terms of anticheat protection. There is no real argument to this except "Sony can be a dick, so Sony will be a dick." You can take off your cape now.
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    I’m glad that Fortnite and Rocket League have found success with crossplay, as that indicates that Sony has made crossplay possible. I’m sad to see you dismissing “authoritarian control over a platform” as “being a dick”, though. I prefer my society less authoritarian and my gaming platforms (and coding guidelines) more authoritarian, but I guess this isn’t the right venue to discuss that dissonance.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  >impossible to cheat on PS4 Technically no: there's exploits for lower versions of the PS4 firmware. I don't think there's anything out for the Xbox One so you're still good there. The Switch is wide open but Nintendo are quick on the banhammer if you go online with a modded console.
protoster 8y ago
Very much relevant: https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/ I'm glad that this is making news, I hope people learn something. Sony lures people with shiny exclusives, don't take the bait or it's only going to get worse.
- adventured 8y ago
  Shiny exclusives? That's Nintendo's specialty. Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, etc.
  - protoster 8y ago
    I think Bloodborne, Uncharted, God of War, Last of Us qualify. Hits a different a demographic. Edit: Guess it's less shiny, more grimy violent third person-y
lebrad 8y ago
The issue of Sony disallowing cross-play is not the reason for controversy in this case. It's actually because logging in to a Fortnite account on PS4 irreversibly locks that account to Sony's walled garden. I created my Fortnite account on PC and played there. Then I logged in on PS4, and played there. Now when I try to log in on Switch, I'm not able to. Here's the actual error message given: "This Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch. Neither the Fortnite website nor Epic Customer Service are able to change this. To play Fortnite on Switch, please create a new account." The problem is that even disassociating the account from Sony won't then allow me to use my Fortnite account outside of Sony's walled garden. The account is permanently tainted by PlayStation. Most importantly, the irreversibility of Sony's taint upon your account isn't disclosed until after the fact. It's a classic anti-user misdeed. Anyway, Hacker News seems like the right place to ponder SaaSS user account foibles.
- mirceal 8y ago
  To me it's common sense to allow me to take my stuff from one platform to the other. Microsoft gets it, Nintendo gets is. I have lost any kind of trust in Sony. After the massive hacks, shitty anti-customer attitude and now locking the Fortnite accounts, I will never buy another Sony product in the future.
  - ribosometronome 8y ago
    Everybody understands the value of crossplay and portability of 'stuff'. It's just not particularly valuable when you're in a dominant position. All of these companies have had pretty shitty, anti-customer attitudes. Microsoft popularized pay-for-online services with Xbox Gold and now it's standard to have to pay a monthly fee to play your console games online. Conservely, crossplay would be the standard now is Microsoft has jumped on board when Sony was supporting it last generation. Nintendo hasn't been able to maintain a reasonable level of presense-across-device, creating a massive headache when changing devises or getting a new console and having to repurchase things you shouldn't have to. I can't really see the justification for not buying a Sony product but continuing to support Xbox or Nintendo given all of their attitudes over the years.
setgree 8y ago
Is it fair to say that corporate self-image concerns seems to drive a lot of the behavior of game companies above and beyond market considerations? I feel like I am often scratching my head at things like this on Sony's or Nintendo's or Microsoft's behalf. For instance, 'The Last of Us' -- supposed to be a great game, can't play it because it's PS3/PS4 only, not going to buy a console just for this one game, it's 5 years old, would seem like a good candidate for a PC port. And yet, no dice. (Many if not most of the decisions Nintendo made in the 2000s, particularly around internet gameplay for the gamecube, were equally confusing.)
- codegoblins 8y ago
  The Last of Us is a game created by Naughty Dog, which is a studio that Sony owns. Exclusives like that drive sales of consoles. If you really want to play it without buying a console, you can use the PS Games-Streaming-as-a-service PS Now and play it from your PC. https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation-now/ps-now-games/ https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation-now/ps...
  - setgree 8y ago
    wow, big thanks for this, I didn't know about it. I chose a bad example then. I could summon others about the big 3's erratic behavior but anyway...I learned something valuable here, thanks.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
notyourwork 8y ago
The reasons for doing this are great and benefit users but I fear this is the death of the console era. The idea of having different consoles with different hardware and playing people with the same setup is what made consoles unique from PC gaming. In PC gaming you have a standard operating system and you could use a joystick, keyboard, mouse, whatever you want with your setup. If all consoles inter-operate we have come full circle and are simply gaming against other PC gamers.
- earenndil 8y ago
  I thought it was because consoles had games that pc did not, and once you had the console, it was convenient to play on it other games as well, even if they were also available on pc?
- djhworld 8y ago
  It makes sense though. Microsoft already sense this (and have done for a few years now), most of their 1st party titles for XboxOne can also be played on Windows. Going forward it sounds like they want to further employ this strategy to essentially make the Microsoft ecosystem the place to play games whether that be via a console (with its plug and play ease) or on Windows, or streamed to a mobile phone or tablet. Nintendo are the outlier here though, but it will be interesting to see where Sony is positioning themselves in 5 or so years
lcfcjs 8y ago
Because they have no reason to.
basgys 8y ago
Sony's decision to lock Fortnite accounts on their platform seems to be in direct violation of the GDRP "data portability" law. the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible. Cross-play is a different story though.
makecheck 8y ago
I see this as the same issue I have with any other Internet platform right now, gaming or not: the relationship is completely backwards. Rather than services referencing your data, for some cryptographically-secure owned-by-you data store, you give them things to store that are entirely outside your control. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, data is typically really expensive (time-wise at the very least) to create. It takes years to build up gaming history, social network points, comment histories and bookmarks, etc. Instead of that being irrevocably yours, instead you’re just one forgotten password or inept cloud provider mistake away from permanently losing the results of years of effort.

219 points by mikece 8y ago

The infuriating issue with Sony's cross play ineptitude is that because I cross-linked a PC Fortnite account with my PS4, I cannot use the same account to play on the Switch.

sli 8y ago
Probably worth noting that this is true even if you unlink the account from PSN. Linking the account once blocks that account from other consoles permanently.
- jsheard 8y ago
  It's especially ridiculous for those who played the Paragon beta on PS4, as their Epic accounts are still blocked from other consoles even though Paragon has been cancelled and shut down.
  - jackewiehose 8y ago
    Do you get a warning when you link your account with Sony? Why are accounts linked to a console at all? That has nothing to do with cross-play...
    - metasaval 8y ago
      No, there is no warning when you link your Epic account to your Sony account, as far as I know. As for why accounts are linked to a console, linking your account means you can have the same friend list across platforms, which makes it easier to play with your friends no matter where you're playing. Also, and maybe more importantly, you have access to all of your cosmetics across platforms.
donarb 8y ago
Blame it on Microsoft, :-) http://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-nintendo-switch-ps4-2018-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/fortnite-nintendo-switch-ps4-...

shmerl 8y ago

They should start promoting Vulkan for developers.

canardlaquay 8y ago
How is this related? It doesn't matter which engine is used in general, the only problem here is Sony. It isn't technical. Fortnite proved it when it 'mistakenly' allowed PS4 players to play with Xbox One players due to a 'configuration issue'.
- skellera 8y ago
  They never claimed it was technical. They pretty much said they’re in the lead so they don’t want to. Microsoft did the same shit last gen. Leaders have no incentive to do it.
- shmerl 8y ago
  > It isn't technical. Exactly. No Vulkan support is the same problem as not allowing cross play - lock-in in case of MS and Sony. At least Nintendo support Vulkan on Switch: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products#submission_310 https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-prod...
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Yeah they do, yet is used as much as GL ES 1.0 was on the PS3. Most Switch games are done in Unity, Unreal, Crysis and a couple of other lesser known middleware engines, taking advantage of NVN.
    - shmerl 8y ago
      I suppose they might use NVM to interface with Nintendo specific hardware, they don't need it for graphics. So if engine developers are smart, they minimize NVM usage to only those corner cases, since there is no need to reinvent the wheel and duplicate work. >yet is used as much as GL ES 1.0 was on the PS3. Any Vulkan based engine can use it. Wasn't there Doom release for Switch?

overcast 8y ago

Sony is the undisputed king of exclusive content. Microsoft really has nothing, and Nintendo lives off of a once per generation Mario/Zelda/Metroid. My guess is that they enjoy their clubhouse, and don't want to invite others to join it.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
Nintendo is definitely the undisputed king of exclusive content. Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world, higher than Star Wars. Mario comes in at number five, putting it above the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Batman, and Call of Duty. We'll see how things shake out, but I would bet money that Nintendo will still be selling Pokemon, Mario, and Zelda games thirty years from now. I have no faith that Sony will even be making video game consoles at that point.
- overcast 8y ago
  Like I said, beyond the holy Nintendo trinity, Sony has the entire rest of the exclusive IPs.
  - yifanl 8y ago
    As a fairly on-and-off gamer, I can't really name any exclusive IPs from Sony. I know Microsoft has Halo, and Nintendo has enough exclusives to make Smash Bros. I vaguely recall Sony making their own Smash Bros a few years back, but none of the IPs featured in it have had any recent entries, nor are really that prominent.
    - jamesgeck0 8y ago
      While none of them are as popular as Nintendo's main series, Sony does have rather a lot of notable exclusive IP. LittleBigPlanet, Bloodborne, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War, The Last of Us, Gravity Rush, PaRappa the Rapper, etc. Halo is popular, but Sony has a much larger portfolio of exclusive IP than Microsoft does right now.
  - 8y ago

smaili 8y ago

If anyone is curious, this was Sony's official response: > We’re always open to hearing what the PlayStation community is interested in to enhance their gaming experience. Fortnite is already a huge hit with PS4 fans, offering a true free-to-play experience so gamers can jump in and play online. With 79 million PS4s sold around the world and more than 80 million monthly active users on PlayStation Network, we’ve built a huge community of gamers who can play together on Fortnite and all online titles. We also offer Fortnite cross-play support with PC, Mac, iOS, and Android devices, expanding the opportunity for Fortnite fans on PS4 to play with even more gamers on other platforms.[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44477524 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44477524

Someone1234 8y ago
That's a response that lacks a response. They don't address Switch or XBox cross-play.
- tyfon 8y ago
  It's the response of a dominant player. Microsoft had the exact same stance when they had the 360 while Sony on the struggling PS3 wanted cross play.
ashleyn 8y ago
I've been following Sony for twenty years or so. "Interop" is not a word in their vocabulary. There are many innovations such as Minidisc, SACD, and ATRAC that never truly took off because they wanted to run proprietary from end to end and own all the rights. They never took a lesson from why IBM's microchannel bus doomed the PS/2. Proprietary standards hamper adoption and success. Many try to be Apple but only one can end up pulling it off.

niftich 8y ago

The Switch and XBox One aren't really competitors to the same degree as the Xbox and PS4, and the games in this announcement aren't the sorts of games that sell a particular console. Rather, they're the sort of stuff you can sink time into between your purchases of AAA exclusives. Annoucing this cross-play is a cheap win-win for both MS and Nintendo: For Nintendo, it solidifies that in the right context, the ultraportable Switch is a comparable platform to the cabinet-bound boxy consoles that are still current in their generation -- a marketing victory that handily exceeds the reputation of its predecessor, the Wii U. For Microsoft, it legitimizes their cross-play message by spreading beyond platforms that they both happened to own, and makes Sony look bad.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
metasaval 8y ago
I think you're underestimating the popularity of Minecraft and Fortnite. There are absolutely people out there who only play Fortnite and nothing else. But you are right in that the Switch doesn't compete with the XBoX the same way the PS4 does (Nintendo consoles always played by their own rules). But Microsoft has already said that they'd be fine with crossplay with PS4, it's Sony holding up the line. Epic already accidentally (or so they say) enabled XBoX and PS4 crossplay once before for a short amount of time [1], so the work is already done, too. [1] https://kotaku.com/epic-accidentally-allows-xbox-and-ps4-cross-play-on-for-1818518611 https://kotaku.com/epic-accidentally-allows-xbox-and-ps4-cro...
- cfadvan 8y ago
  Why would a company care about people who only play Fortnite? They’re not going to be buying anything other than those games, and when the fad dies away, they will too. It’s one thing to cater to casual players, who will buy lots of different games, another to Madden/COD players who will buy yearly installments. Pandering to s single fad that will be replaced within a year though is crazy. People will get tired of Battle Royale, just like they did with Hero shooters, and the fads before that.

jetti 8y ago

One of the great things about Rocket League is the cross play. While, as a PS4 owner, I cannot play against those on XBox or Switch, I am able to play against PC players in addition to PS4. It is always nice increasing the player pool. That said, it is really frustrating that Sony is so stubborn on this issue.

SpliffnCola 8y ago
I’m excited about the upcoming _true_ cross platform play coming mid July/August. You will be able to create a new in-game gamertag; it will require re-adding friends but I’m really excited to be able to finally play remotely with my friends!

padobson 8y ago

I don't think it's out of line to say Sony understands the platform business better than anyone. And I'm not just talking about console makers, I'm talking about all platforms: iOS, Android, Steam, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc. Sony's first goal every generation since the PSOne has been winning game developers to their side. Game devs like large user bases, but that's only one aspect of why a developer picks a console. Sony's primary focus every generation is to get everything else right: development tools, hardware storage and performance, consistent controller design, software medium, and so on. They've had some misfires here and there (the Cell processor comes to mind), but they typically outperform their competition in all of these categories. I think it's because Sony knows their customer isn't the gamer, it's the game developer. The game developer's customer is the gamer. Again, user base numbers attract developers, but Sony recognizes that user bases are driven by developer support. It's definitely reciprocal, but Sony's dominance comes from understanding that catering to the developer is paramount. That's why they've consistently created an environment that breeds killer apps. I can't think of another platform maker in the last 20+ years who's been better. So after 20 years of building up that kind of leverage with developers, it doesn't make much sense to just give part of it away until game developers make it clear they need it.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
> Sony understands the platform business better than anyone. And I'm not just talking about console makers, I'm talking about all platforms: iOS, Android, Steam, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc etc. Out of curiosity, seeing as how some of those platforms are the bread and butter of companies that have market caps that far exceed Sony, what leads you to believe that?
- padobson 8y ago
  I would chalk the market cap differences up to the differences in the industries. Internet search is more than 5 times the size of console gaming, and vastly more profitable. I think a true quantitative comparison would have to account for market size, market share, age of the market, and typical industry profit margins. A qualitative comparison might be more instructive, though. How many truly successful user experiences have been built on top of Facebook? Newsfeed, Messenger, and Ads? Maybe Farmville? On top of Google? Search, Gmail, Analytics and Ads? Less than a handful for both. Playstation, on the other hand, has had thousands of successful user experiences over a twenty year period. Facebook, Google, and others often seem to have an adversarial relationship with their 3rd party developers. I could only imagine what types of amazing experiences we could be enjoying if they adopted the licensing model that's led Sony to dominate its industry for 20 years.

post_break 8y ago

Nintendo has started to brick the game cartridges coming from consoles that were hacked. So you could buy a game second hand that doesn't work. Nintendo isn't in the clear yet.

e1ven 8y ago
I’m sure every company has done lots of things various people disapprove of. This is an article about cross-play and your comment isn’t related to that, is it?
- post_break 8y ago
  Well if you buy a used switch game, that has been banned, you can't cross play online with it. You have no way of knowing if that game has been banned either. So it's related to online play.
davb 8y ago
My understanding is that each Switch cartridge has a unique key or certificate. People have begun dumping the cartridge ROMs (including certificate) and sharing these online or burning them to writable carts. Nintendo is blocking these keys from online play. The upset seems to be over the very narrow case where someone dumps a ROM, shares it widely enough that Nintendo blocks it, then sells the genuine progenitor cartridge to an unwitting customer. I can’t see that happening too often, it only affects online play, and it’s the exact same risk someone takes buying a used console (which are frequently blocked from online play for a number of TOS violations). I’m fine with this. While I am generally against DRM and over-reaching copy protection mechanisms, I think this is reasonable. Especially in the context of online play.
LocalH 8y ago
They've done no such thing. Blocking online play with the signatures from dumped and pirated carts, maybe. But they haven't actually bricked any systems or carts - "banned from network services" is nowhere near "bricking".

mtgx 8y ago

Sony is missing out on a partnership with Steam, especially if they would just support Vulkan on PS5. The PS5 could also be a "Steam machine".

codegoblins 8y ago
Why would sony want to cede their own very profitable digital games storefront to valve?
elsonrodriguez 8y ago
Sony had a deal with Valve a while back for Portal 2, don't know what happened to it.

VectorLock 8y ago

Sony is the king of the console heap so they have no reason to allow cross-play. "Everybody is on PS4, so I need to get a PS4 to play with them" is a huge driver of their sales. That is the moat around their lucrative console castle. There is no way they'd allow a bridge to Xbox or Switch like Microsoft and Nintendo push-- it would only weaken their Sony's position and strengthen their competition's. Its shitty but the ball is in their court.

zeroDivisible 8y ago
I really would want to see Nintendo Switch to get even more mainstream than it is now. Not that I appreciate their way too (supposedly the anti-piracy / console-locking measures in Switch are first grade?) but this would put pressure on Sony to possibly stop blocking cross-play.
ageitgey 8y ago
I think that in any large company in a market leading position with a lot of turnover, it's essentially impossible to convince them to act in their own long-term best interest. Microsoft is acting scrappy right now (because they have to) and Sony is acting like a self-satisfied dinosaur (because no one is going to get promoted for doing anything different). Sony is thinking short term - "If we open up on Fortnite, we'll sell less content now through our digital store". So no one at Sony is willing to fight for this. It won't make any charts go up for the next quarterly earnings. But the long-term view is that they are teaching an entire new generation of gamers that "Playstation is the worst place to play Fortnite - the world's most popular game". That is going to be a disaster the next time new consoles are released - just like how Microsoft made similarly dumb moves when they first launched the XBox One.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  What is the dominant platform for Fortnite? There are 125 million registered users and 3.3 active concurrently but I have yet to see any numbers broken down by platform. If we assume PS4 is not the dominant platform then your assertions might be true, however if PS4 is the dominant platform then they're absurd. Sony is teaching the same lesson as Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Atari. It's best to buy the same console as your friends.

floatingatoll 8y ago

I am so glad Sony doesn’t offer crossplay, especially with PC, for one simple reason: It’s nearly impossible to cheat on a PS4 game, and a console ban costs hundreds of dollars, and that protects me from being exposed to cheating; via save files, via video driver hacks, via ‘I only use it for development’ memory patchers. (Network manipulation cheating still occurs, but that can’t be used without other players reporting you, and is an issue on all platforms.)

jsheard 8y ago
Fortnite doesn't have this problem because it only places you in cross-platform games if there are multiple platforms in your party. If you want a guaranteed cheat-free experience you can always play solo or with a same-console party and never see any PC users.
eropple 8y ago
Sony happily permits crossplay with those mustachio-curling memory-patching dreaded PC players. Fortnite does allow crossplay between PC and PS4 and Mac and mobile. PC/PS4 crossplay is also available in Rocket League and some other games. The only gate is between PS4/Xbox and PS4/Switch--and both platforms seem very much on par with the PS4 in terms of anticheat protection. There is no real argument to this except "Sony can be a dick, so Sony will be a dick." You can take off your cape now.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  I’m glad that Fortnite and Rocket League have found success with crossplay, as that indicates that Sony has made crossplay possible. I’m sad to see you dismissing “authoritarian control over a platform” as “being a dick”, though. I prefer my society less authoritarian and my gaming platforms (and coding guidelines) more authoritarian, but I guess this isn’t the right venue to discuss that dissonance.
voltagex_ 8y ago
>impossible to cheat on PS4 Technically no: there's exploits for lower versions of the PS4 firmware. I don't think there's anything out for the Xbox One so you're still good there. The Switch is wide open but Nintendo are quick on the banhammer if you go online with a modded console.

protoster 8y ago

Very much relevant: https://xkcd.com/743/ https://xkcd.com/743/ I'm glad that this is making news, I hope people learn something. Sony lures people with shiny exclusives, don't take the bait or it's only going to get worse.

adventured 8y ago
Shiny exclusives? That's Nintendo's specialty. Mario, Mario Kart, Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Donkey Kong, Star Fox, etc.
- protoster 8y ago
  I think Bloodborne, Uncharted, God of War, Last of Us qualify. Hits a different a demographic. Edit: Guess it's less shiny, more grimy violent third person-y

lebrad 8y ago

The issue of Sony disallowing cross-play is not the reason for controversy in this case. It's actually because logging in to a Fortnite account on PS4 irreversibly locks that account to Sony's walled garden. I created my Fortnite account on PC and played there. Then I logged in on PS4, and played there. Now when I try to log in on Switch, I'm not able to. Here's the actual error message given: "This Fortnite account is associated with a platform which does not allow it to operate on Switch. Neither the Fortnite website nor Epic Customer Service are able to change this. To play Fortnite on Switch, please create a new account." The problem is that even disassociating the account from Sony won't then allow me to use my Fortnite account outside of Sony's walled garden. The account is permanently tainted by PlayStation. Most importantly, the irreversibility of Sony's taint upon your account isn't disclosed until after the fact. It's a classic anti-user misdeed. Anyway, Hacker News seems like the right place to ponder SaaSS user account foibles.

mirceal 8y ago
To me it's common sense to allow me to take my stuff from one platform to the other. Microsoft gets it, Nintendo gets is. I have lost any kind of trust in Sony. After the massive hacks, shitty anti-customer attitude and now locking the Fortnite accounts, I will never buy another Sony product in the future.
- ribosometronome 8y ago
  Everybody understands the value of crossplay and portability of 'stuff'. It's just not particularly valuable when you're in a dominant position. All of these companies have had pretty shitty, anti-customer attitudes. Microsoft popularized pay-for-online services with Xbox Gold and now it's standard to have to pay a monthly fee to play your console games online. Conservely, crossplay would be the standard now is Microsoft has jumped on board when Sony was supporting it last generation. Nintendo hasn't been able to maintain a reasonable level of presense-across-device, creating a massive headache when changing devises or getting a new console and having to repurchase things you shouldn't have to. I can't really see the justification for not buying a Sony product but continuing to support Xbox or Nintendo given all of their attitudes over the years.

setgree 8y ago

Is it fair to say that corporate self-image concerns seems to drive a lot of the behavior of game companies above and beyond market considerations? I feel like I am often scratching my head at things like this on Sony's or Nintendo's or Microsoft's behalf. For instance, 'The Last of Us' -- supposed to be a great game, can't play it because it's PS3/PS4 only, not going to buy a console just for this one game, it's 5 years old, would seem like a good candidate for a PC port. And yet, no dice. (Many if not most of the decisions Nintendo made in the 2000s, particularly around internet gameplay for the gamecube, were equally confusing.)

codegoblins 8y ago
The Last of Us is a game created by Naughty Dog, which is a studio that Sony owns. Exclusives like that drive sales of consoles. If you really want to play it without buying a console, you can use the PS Games-Streaming-as-a-service PS Now and play it from your PC. https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation-now/ps-now-games/ https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/explore/playstation-now/ps...
- setgree 8y ago
  wow, big thanks for this, I didn't know about it. I chose a bad example then. I could summon others about the big 3's erratic behavior but anyway...I learned something valuable here, thanks.
deleted 8y ago
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notyourwork 8y ago

The reasons for doing this are great and benefit users but I fear this is the death of the console era. The idea of having different consoles with different hardware and playing people with the same setup is what made consoles unique from PC gaming. In PC gaming you have a standard operating system and you could use a joystick, keyboard, mouse, whatever you want with your setup. If all consoles inter-operate we have come full circle and are simply gaming against other PC gamers.

earenndil 8y ago
I thought it was because consoles had games that pc did not, and once you had the console, it was convenient to play on it other games as well, even if they were also available on pc?
djhworld 8y ago
It makes sense though. Microsoft already sense this (and have done for a few years now), most of their 1st party titles for XboxOne can also be played on Windows. Going forward it sounds like they want to further employ this strategy to essentially make the Microsoft ecosystem the place to play games whether that be via a console (with its plug and play ease) or on Windows, or streamed to a mobile phone or tablet. Nintendo are the outlier here though, but it will be interesting to see where Sony is positioning themselves in 5 or so years

lcfcjs 8y ago

Because they have no reason to.

basgys 8y ago

Sony's decision to lock Fortnite accounts on their platform seems to be in direct violation of the GDRP "data portability" law. the data subject shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible. Cross-play is a different story though.

makecheck 8y ago

I see this as the same issue I have with any other Internet platform right now, gaming or not: the relationship is completely backwards. Rather than services referencing your data, for some cryptographically-secure owned-by-you data store, you give them things to store that are entirely outside your control. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, data is typically really expensive (time-wise at the very least) to create. It takes years to build up gaming history, social network points, comment histories and bookmarks, etc. Instead of that being irrevocably yours, instead you’re just one forgotten password or inept cloud provider mistake away from permanently losing the results of years of effort.