Hell has frozen over. Probably. The day no one thought would occur has occurred. Today, Sony announced that it will support cross-play and cross-progression in Fortnite between Xbox One, PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS, and PlayStation 4. Cross-play has become a popular feature over the past year, and it's great to see a company like Sony — which commands a significant lead in console sales — cave to the mounting pressure.
A few weeks ago, even Bethesda said that it would forgo bringing games like The Elder Scrolls: Legends to PlayStation 4 if it couldn't utilize cross-play and cross-progression systems. However, the biggest hurdle came with Fortnite because many gamers were locked out of cross-progression on other platforms if they had even linked their Fortnite accounts to a PlayStation 4 in the past. Sony said the following on the PlayStation Blog this morning.
Following a comprehensive evaluation process, Sony Interactive Entertainment has identified a path toward supporting cross-platform features for select third-party content... The first step will be an open beta beginning today for Fortnite that will allow for cross-platform gameplay, progression, and commerce across PlayStation 4, Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and Mac... Today, the communities around some games have evolved to the point where cross-platform experiences add significant value to players. In recognition of this... we look to open up the platform. This represents a major policy change... and we are now in the planning process across the organization to support this.
Hopefully the Fortnite open beta goes smoothly so that cross-play and cross-progression happens between more games on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. We'll keep you posted as soon as we receive more information.
Cross-play and cross-progression is the future of the gaming industry and today's announcement may pave the way for games like Minecraft to be updated to the "Bedrock" version on Sony's platform. This is the right move even though it took a while to happen.
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