Sony has confirmed that they can now enable PlayStation 4 crossplay on any game, starting with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
Things started getting a little heated and conceited late last year when Sony made it publicly clear that they did not support crossplay between the PlayStation 4 and other consoles. The issue became more and more pressing as Microsoft and Nintendo took the opportunity to advertise their crossplay offerings upfront. After what many assume to be pressure from Epic Games and Fortnite, Sony did relent somewhat, and declared that they would be testing a crossplay system with certain games. Now that testing period is over, and Sony has declared that crossplay is readily available for any game that wants it.
As part of a short interview with PlayStation boss Jim Ryan, Wired revealed that the new system can now support any game that wants to use it. “The track record of the incumbent platform winning the next time around is not a great one,” said Ryan. “So the major thrust of my executive energy is to avoid complacency.”
That sounds an awful lot like Ryan admitting that PlayStation was making a mistake by walling themselves off. There has been a few cases of developers explicitly stating that they could enable PS4 crossplay that very day if Sony allowed them, and even an instance or two where crossplay was accidentally enabled for a day, so it seems like exiting the crossplay beta period wasn’t just a technological thing for Sony. Regardless, it’s good that crossplay across every system is now essentially universally supported, and we look forward to seeing games make use of it in the future.
