The CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jim Ryan, has spoken about the role of cross-play in the future of PSN gaming with Axios. In the interview, the bigwig said would like as many games to be cross-play as possible.
Leaked reports from the legal gobstopper of Apple vs. Epic suggested that PlayStation were the only games company that thought of asking for fees for being a part of crossplay. Business sense does not always make for the most player-friendly ethos, and Sony has been struggling to shake the ire of players because of its self-made difficulties getting cross-play operating on PlayStation systems.
In an about-face on the matter, Playstation chief Jim Ryan — known as Sir Business around TT — has spoken to Axios. “We support and encourage cross-play,” the chief said. Apparently, he bought up Fortnite, Rocket League, Call of Duty, Minecraft, and the upcoming connectivity for Destiny 2. “That number will continue to grow,” Sir Business maintained.
Perhaps this goes without saying, but these are all humongous games that would be able to afford the kind of money PlayStation were allegedly after. All of them are live-service and make more money than one would care to count, so there is no doubt that PlayStation would want to actively encourage this kind of AAA cross-play. For the smaller games, things remain a mystery.
As if to reinforce the fact that Sony’s internal policy regarding cross-play has not actually changed, Sir Business’ answer regarding the Borderland 3 situation was less than substantial. Randy Pitchford, the Borderlands published Gearbox’s CEO, tweeted that Borderlands 3 would be cross-play everywhere but PlayStation. In response, Ryan said he would not talk about a “live business issue with a long-standing partner,” and that at PlayStation “our policies are consistent across all of the publishers.” We would love to be a fly on the wall for these meetings because the policy is very vague and appears to be antithetical to what is going on over at Xbox.