7 ms·

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 driv

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.
  - ageitgey 8y ago
    I don't have hard numbers on Fortnite, but from what was sussed out of PUBG press releases, it sounded like mobile platforms are way, way more popular by player count than console/PC for them. Fortnite is a little different because it's free on every platform, but I bet they still have similar user numbers just because a lot more people have phones than any console. And I bet this is especially true for the younger generation that Fortnite appeals to. Of course that's not to say that any mobile user who dips into a free-to-play game has the same long term customer value as a hardcore console player so I'm not sure how that math works out. But it's worth keeping in mind that the player base of any console is dwarfed by phone users and that's a funnel of millions of new gamers who see the PS4 as the only platform that "sucks for Fortnite". I think that could have long term market effects.
- mirceal 8y ago
  the problem with dinosaurs is that they go extinct. It's gonna take a while but with this kind of attitude they are more or less ensuring they don't have a future.
  - vezycash 8y ago
    >the problem with dinosaurs is that they go extinct. Rephrased: The good thing about dinosaurs is that they go extinct. Imagine 1500s humans living with dinosaurs. Humans would be extinct. So let Ms, Sony and any other dinosaur keep shooting themselves in the foot.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  Sony is thinking long term. As is Microsoft. It's short-term to cater to a specific game that happens to be popular today. In the long term, neither console maker wants cross-platform support. They want to create a situation where everyone has to have both the Sony device and the Microsoft device. That's an equilibrium that both companies are happy with. Pure cross-platform play ends in consumers not needing both devices and hence total sales will drop. When the "pendulum swings" and Xbox has a dominant generation, expect Microsoft to reject cross-platform play.
  - ageitgey 8y ago
    Fair points. I personally disagree that Sony is making the right long term choice - its hard to come back from a widely negative perception among consumers in such a perception-driven industry and they have other ways to drive Playstation adoption. But I totally agree that Microsoft would be doing exactly the same stuff if they happened to be the market leader.
  - metasaval 8y ago
    I don't fully agree that Microsoft would be doing this if they were dominant. Maybe under Mattrick, but Phil Spencer has been making a lot of right calls since becoming head of XBoX, like bringing all their games day 1 to PC and going all-in on backwards compatibility for their 360 and OG XBoX titles. Even their adaptive controller is cool, even if I'm not someone who would use it. I recommend watching his interviews with Jeff from Giant Bomb that he's done every year at E3 to get an idea of his views when it comes to this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70z2jtcQf4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70z2jtcQf4s Companies change all the time, though. The next head of XBoX could go back to the Mattrick days and completely burn all the good will they have. But, as long as Phil and Nadella are around, I don't think they'll be blocking cross-play anytime soon, even if they do become the dominant platform.
    - buzer 8y ago
      I wouldn't be so sure. There has been some talks about bringing Final Fantasy XIV to Xbox & Switch for quite a while, but the condition for that from FFXIV side is cross-platform play like the case is already with PC & PS4 (and previously PS3, latest expansion dropped PS3 support). From sounds of it Nintendo and Microsoft had some issues regarding that. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-director-wants-switch-and-xbox-on/1100-6451129/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-director-...
fokinsean 8y ago
> "Everybody is on PS4, so I need to get a PS4 to play with them" To be honest that is why a few friends and myself got PS4s. We had quite a few friends on the platform and I already had an xbox, but I wanted to play with them so I got a PS4. What's interesting is that you can cross play with PC and Mobile on PS4 though. It sounds like they just don't want to work with Microsoft or Nintendo.
- wilsonnb2 8y ago
  I think the real reason Sony is so hesitant to implement crossplay is not that they are so far ahead of Microsoft in console sales, but because they are actually quite close in certain markets. If you look at the global sales, then yes, the PS4 is stomping the Xbox One into oblivion at the moment. If you look at the US sales, the difference between them is much smaller [1]. If Sony enables crossplay, they will probably lose a lot of sales to Microsoft in the US because they lack the overwhelming popularity that they have in Japan and other markets. This article [2] shows just how poorly the Xbox sells in Japan - the week the Xbox One X launched, only 1,639 were sold. Only 49 units of the less powerful Xbox One S were sold. For comparison, almost 30,000 PS4 and PS4 Pros were sold. Even the PS Vita beat out the Xbox, with around 3,000 sold. [1] http://www.vgchartz.com/article/271063/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-switch-usa-lifetime-salesnovember-2017/ http://www.vgchartz.com/article/271063/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-sw... [2] https://kotaku.com/here-are-the-xbox-one-xs-japanese-sellout-sales-figures-1820499120 https://kotaku.com/here-are-the-xbox-one-xs-japanese-sellout...
robotnixon 8y ago
Sounds similar to Apple's stance on not porting iMessage to Android.
- endemic 8y ago
  Nah, that'd be more like if iMessage _was_ on Android, but once you used it there you could no longer use it on your iPhone.

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.
- ageitgey 8y ago
  I don't have hard numbers on Fortnite, but from what was sussed out of PUBG press releases, it sounded like mobile platforms are way, way more popular by player count than console/PC for them. Fortnite is a little different because it's free on every platform, but I bet they still have similar user numbers just because a lot more people have phones than any console. And I bet this is especially true for the younger generation that Fortnite appeals to. Of course that's not to say that any mobile user who dips into a free-to-play game has the same long term customer value as a hardcore console player so I'm not sure how that math works out. But it's worth keeping in mind that the player base of any console is dwarfed by phone users and that's a funnel of millions of new gamers who see the PS4 as the only platform that "sucks for Fortnite". I think that could have long term market effects.
mirceal 8y ago
the problem with dinosaurs is that they go extinct. It's gonna take a while but with this kind of attitude they are more or less ensuring they don't have a future.
- vezycash 8y ago
  >the problem with dinosaurs is that they go extinct. Rephrased: The good thing about dinosaurs is that they go extinct. Imagine 1500s humans living with dinosaurs. Humans would be extinct. So let Ms, Sony and any other dinosaur keep shooting themselves in the foot.
TAForObvReasons 8y ago
Sony is thinking long term. As is Microsoft. It's short-term to cater to a specific game that happens to be popular today. In the long term, neither console maker wants cross-platform support. They want to create a situation where everyone has to have both the Sony device and the Microsoft device. That's an equilibrium that both companies are happy with. Pure cross-platform play ends in consumers not needing both devices and hence total sales will drop. When the "pendulum swings" and Xbox has a dominant generation, expect Microsoft to reject cross-platform play.
- ageitgey 8y ago
  Fair points. I personally disagree that Sony is making the right long term choice - its hard to come back from a widely negative perception among consumers in such a perception-driven industry and they have other ways to drive Playstation adoption. But I totally agree that Microsoft would be doing exactly the same stuff if they happened to be the market leader.
- metasaval 8y ago
  I don't fully agree that Microsoft would be doing this if they were dominant. Maybe under Mattrick, but Phil Spencer has been making a lot of right calls since becoming head of XBoX, like bringing all their games day 1 to PC and going all-in on backwards compatibility for their 360 and OG XBoX titles. Even their adaptive controller is cool, even if I'm not someone who would use it. I recommend watching his interviews with Jeff from Giant Bomb that he's done every year at E3 to get an idea of his views when it comes to this stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70z2jtcQf4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70z2jtcQf4s Companies change all the time, though. The next head of XBoX could go back to the Mattrick days and completely burn all the good will they have. But, as long as Phil and Nadella are around, I don't think they'll be blocking cross-play anytime soon, even if they do become the dominant platform.
  - buzer 8y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure. There has been some talks about bringing Final Fantasy XIV to Xbox & Switch for quite a while, but the condition for that from FFXIV side is cross-platform play like the case is already with PC & PS4 (and previously PS3, latest expansion dropped PS3 support). From sounds of it Nintendo and Microsoft had some issues regarding that. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-director-wants-switch-and-xbox-on/1100-6451129/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/final-fantasy-14-director-...

fokinsean 8y ago

> "Everybody is on PS4, so I need to get a PS4 to play with them" To be honest that is why a few friends and myself got PS4s. We had quite a few friends on the platform and I already had an xbox, but I wanted to play with them so I got a PS4. What's interesting is that you can cross play with PC and Mobile on PS4 though. It sounds like they just don't want to work with Microsoft or Nintendo.

wilsonnb2 8y ago
I think the real reason Sony is so hesitant to implement crossplay is not that they are so far ahead of Microsoft in console sales, but because they are actually quite close in certain markets. If you look at the global sales, then yes, the PS4 is stomping the Xbox One into oblivion at the moment. If you look at the US sales, the difference between them is much smaller [1]. If Sony enables crossplay, they will probably lose a lot of sales to Microsoft in the US because they lack the overwhelming popularity that they have in Japan and other markets. This article [2] shows just how poorly the Xbox sells in Japan - the week the Xbox One X launched, only 1,639 were sold. Only 49 units of the less powerful Xbox One S were sold. For comparison, almost 30,000 PS4 and PS4 Pros were sold. Even the PS Vita beat out the Xbox, with around 3,000 sold. [1] http://www.vgchartz.com/article/271063/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-switch-usa-lifetime-salesnovember-2017/ http://www.vgchartz.com/article/271063/ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-sw... [2] https://kotaku.com/here-are-the-xbox-one-xs-japanese-sellout-sales-figures-1820499120 https://kotaku.com/here-are-the-xbox-one-xs-japanese-sellout...

robotnixon 8y ago

Sounds similar to Apple's stance on not porting iMessage to Android.

endemic 8y ago
Nah, that'd be more like if iMessage _was_ on Android, but once you used it there you could no longer use it on your iPhone.