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Sony is Optimistic About Finding Cross-play Solution

The recent ongoing cross-play controversy had PlayStation 4 owners unimpressed with Sony’s first response to the issue.

However, they may be seeing brighter days as Sony executive Shawn Layden denied allegations that it wasn’t listening to the growing anger from its players in a Gamelab conference today.

“We’re hearing it. We’re looking at a lot of the possibilities,” said Layden. “You can imagine that the circumstances around that affect a lot more than just one game. I’m confident we’ll get to a solution which will be understood and accepted by our gaming community, while at the same time supporting our business.”

This announcement shows more understanding than Sony’s initial response which only said it was “open to hearing” from the PlayStation community.

Nintendo and Microsoft responded by releasing a trailer which promotes Minecraft cross-play between Switch and Xbox One. Nintendo America president, Reggie Fils-Aime said that Nintendo believes in “being both developer-forward and fan-forward.”

Meanwhile, former Sony Online Entertainment head John Smedley recently said Sony won’t allow cross-play because of the money involved. In an explanation on twitter, Smedley had written that Sony didn’t like the idea of a customer buying “something on an Xbox and it being used on a PlayStation.”

Sony and Xbox executives have been talking about this since E3 2017. The issue really became heated when Fortnite launched on Switch earlier this month. It included with cross-play and account carryover support for other platforms – just not PlayStation 4.