Chucklefish Claims Sony Turned Down Recent Crossplay Requests

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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Sony has generally opposed cross-platform play on their PS4-generation games, but the rest of the gaming industry has been pressuring them to change. Thanks to the unreal popularity of Fortnite, Sony finally caved late last year and announced a cross-play "beta" for Epic's battle royale game. Rocket League eventually got cross platform support as well, but according to a recent post on ResetEra, Sony might not be particularly eager to spread it across their lineup. ChuckleFish, who's best known for publishing Stardew Valley, Starbound, Risk of Rain, and Wargroove, said "We made many requests for crossplay (both through our account manager and directly with higher ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen."

This seemingly conflicts with a Game Informer interview from earlier this week, where Sony's Shaw Layden said "We're open for business on this one. All it takes is for publishers and developers who wish to permission it. As ever, just work with your PlayStation account manager, and they will walk you through the steps that we've learned through our partnership with Epic on how this works. I don't believe right now there is any gating factor on that. I think they're open to make proposals, because the Fortnite thing worked pretty well." Thanks to VG247 for spotting both posts.

From our side, we can *literally* toggle a switch and have it working. Of course policy work might be more complicated for Sony. Just wanted to provide some balance on the issue and say that it certainly isn't a question of developers having not contacted their account managers or having dropped the ball. We were told no.
 
It hurts sales to enable XPlat. If you would rather play on pc, but your best buddy only has a ps4, you would have to get it for ps4 to play with him. Why would they ever enable it for anyone if it wasn't forced on them?
 
oldmanbal said:
It hurts sales to enable XPlat. If you would rather play on pc, but your best buddy only has a ps4, you would have to get it for ps4 to play with him. Why would they ever enable it for anyone if it wasn't forced on them?
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Pretty much. Same as console exclusives. They want you using their console and their services. If MS hadn't dropped the ball this generation I doubt they'd have enabled crossplay either.
 
Things like this are always disappointing, but Sony is *always* looking for ways to create an exclusive community in most everything they do. This shit goes back to betamax.
 
Chucklefish? more like small fish. Sony says no to them because it's a tiny publisher (with an excellent track record ) but aren't really comparable to EA. Sony isn't going to make that kind investment without a solid return.
 
viscountalpha said:
Chucklefish? more like small fish. Sony says no to them because it's a tiny publisher (with an excellent track record ) but aren't really comparable to EA. Sony isn't going to make that kind investment without a solid return.
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what investment? They are planning on releasing a ps4 version anyways and have said that its literally a switch throw away from enabling crossplay on the PS4 but sony wont allow them.
 
exlink said:
Microsoft didn't want crossplay last generation and Sony doesn't want it this generation. This is what happens when you're top dog by having the most console sales and the largest playerbase.
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Sony's PSN was getting hacked left and right when Microsoft said no. They also said (paraphrasing) "no, your network sucks, improve that and then talk to us."

So it's worth noting that in the same year, Sony was sued by multiple governments twice for breaches into the PSN that exposed millions of players personal and financial information. The governments won because Sony's network sucked, they knew it sucked, and they did next to nothing to protect their users. Microsoft took one look at that decided they didn't want people using PSN to hack into Live.

But, it sounds better when you say it your way so don't let facts get in the way of your misguided loyalty.

Also, Sony does support cross-play, usually with the other half of Microsoft (I.E. PC). So they aren't anti-Microsoft, they are anti-console. Whereas Microsoft sees this as a way to sell Xbox Live subscriptions everywhere as they want game devs using Xbox services which then require players having a gold account. Honestly, Steam should be more worried about this move from Microsoft than anything else. The only reason to sell on Steam is for the excellent platform it provides, if Microsoft gets this right, they'll effectively put their version of Steam on every console.
 
This isn't a bad thing for some games. I wouldn't want to play an FPS with console guys. Either they will get butchered or they'll have an unfair auto aim. It will also be yet another reason to not support modding or at least be another hindrance to it.

On the other hand, some games that are controller based and simply won't ever support modding may benefit from it. Ace Combat 7 or the last Sonic Racing game come to mind. The former is okay and I've been playing it but I assume the online community will be dead on PC within a few months. The latter I got for dirt cheap and ended up having a lot of fun with it but the player base was understandably small. Playing with console players may have been a benefit.
 
Ragenrok said:
what investment? They are planning on releasing a ps4 version anyways and have said that its literally a switch throw away from enabling crossplay on the PS4 but sony wont allow them.
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RTFA. It's not so simple.
"
As far as games-as-service and esports, or recurring revenue models or whatever – if we can do something interesting and meaningful in those areas, we’ll do it. If we were going to partner with another team in some capacity to deliver, again, something interesting and meaningful, we’ll be there and we’ll do it. It’s not that we’re not interested in those areas, it’s just an area we haven’t historically performed very well."

This is their primary concern.
 
viscountalpha said:
RTFA. It's not so simple.
"
As far as games-as-service and esports, or recurring revenue models or whatever – if we can do something interesting and meaningful in those areas, we’ll do it. If we were going to partner with another team in some capacity to deliver, again, something interesting and meaningful, we’ll be there and we’ll do it. It’s not that we’re not interested in those areas, it’s just an area we haven’t historically performed very well."

This is their primary concern.
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Ok but I don't even have to read the article since alpha quoted the relevant parts. Shawn very clearly states all developers have to do is ask their ps managers for crossplay support since fortnight worked out, and chucklefish has straight up said that it is that simple for them, they just need to click "crossplay" in their code to turn it on.

The only thing not clear is if cross save/progression is a factor, while crossplay is very easy for chuckle I don't think cross progression would be and perhaps that's what the issue is.
 
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